San Francisco based mPOS payment platform Square has announced it will support Bitcoin payments on its merchant marketplace “Square Market”.
Square Market launched in June 2013, and serves as a marketplace for Square merchants similar to eBay. Square dies not charge merchants for product listings on the market but does take a 2.75% fee for every transaction completed on the platform.
is the payment processor behind Square’s new endeavor.
According to a blog post made by Square’s head of Market Ajit Varma, he expands on the payment processes once a customer chooses the “Pay with Bitcoin” option.
-Firstly the system will generate a new Bitcoin Wallet address.
-The user will then be asked to enter their Email address.
-The user is required to complete the Bitcoin payment with 10 minutes or else the order will be voided.
-The user will then be required to confirm the payment. Users with a mobile device can simply confirm the payment by scanning a QR with a mobile device.
-After customer confirmation, the payment needs to be validated by Square by checking if the newly generated address receives the payment.
-Afterwards the User is presented with a confirmation page, finalizing the order.
The process seems to be a bit cumbersome in comparison to other Bitcoin payment solutions such as . Most likely the procedure will be simplified in the near future.
“It’s pretty magical to witness first-hand!” stated Varma in the post.
Merchants will receive the amount of the payment in USD, minus the 2.75% fee. That fee is considerably higher than those offered by other Bitcoin payment solutions. Also unlike other Bitcoin processors there is no option to be paid out in BTC.
When comparing the process and fees to other proprietary solutions it may not seem that compelling. However, given Squares prominent place in the payment space shows a wider mass acceptance of the cryptocurrency.
Time will show if Square’s gamble on the digital-currency will pay off and we might see it seep its way into its mPOS platform resulting in Brick and Mortar merchants, like Starbucks, to accept Bitcoin payments via Square.
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