In the sci-fi show Almost Human, everyone has a bitcoin wallet. More and more places to spend bitcoin means that could become a reality, and popular indie merchant mobile payment provider Square is the latest to accept the cryptocurrency.
In an announcement today on their blog, which isn’t an April Fool’s Joke pushed early Square assures us, the company notes that bitcoin can be used to buy goods and services with Square Market as of today. That means shoppers can pay using the virtual currency on Square’s online storefront, which includes items from merchants around the world collected in one place.
Square isn’t just throwing bitcoin in to ride the hype wave, however. It’s taken steps to make sure that for both buyer and seller, the experience is as painless and as close to using any other form of payment as possible. Accordingly, they’ve streamlined it on the buyer side with QR code scanning for mobile bitcoin wallets, and easy-to-follow instructions for web-based-hosted storage mechanisms.
On the seller side, worrying about converting bitcoin to real money isn’t an issue; the selling party automatically gets the amount for whatever they sold in USD, in the full amount of USD the product or service was advertised at (there are no fees associated with bitcoin payments for either seller or buyer, Square tells us). Square is working with Coinbase to process bitcoin exchange.
This is a nice free service addition for Square Market sellers and buyers, and possibly one more step towards a future where bionic detectives and their android counterparts check our bitcoin wallets during homicide investigations for theft as a motive.