Jack Dorsey’s Block, Inc. has auto-enabled native Bitcoin payments over the Lightning Network for all eligible Square merchants — potentially reaching millions of businesses across the United States, excluding New York. While it looks like a simple payments upgrade at first, Square’s updated Bitcoin Terms of Service reveal a powerful driver for corporate Bitcoin treasury adoption at scale.
By default, Bitcoin Payments is now turned on for eligible sellers, shifting from the previous opt-in model to opt-out. Merchants can disable the feature at any time through their Square Account settings. When a customer pays with Bitcoin via a simple QR code at checkout, the transaction settles near-instantly over the Lightning Network. As Maria Pesce confirmed to me in an X post, by default all merchants will now accept bitcoin but settle the payments in USD, but every merchant will be able to choose to also keep the bitcoin in bitcoin and easily put it into their own balance sheet if they so want. They can even set a percentage, like 20% of each bitcoin payment received as bitcoin and put on their balance sheet.
This flexibility is key. Many businesses will likely start by settling in USD to avoid volatility, but every merchant now has an effortless option to hold the Bitcoin instead — or set preferences to receive a portion of incoming payments as sats. Square also offers Bitcoin Conversions, letting merchants automatically convert a chosen percentage of their daily debit and credit card sales into Bitcoin on autopilot, steadily building a position with minimal effort.
Even if only a small fraction of Square’s roughly four million merchants decide to hold part of their Bitcoin receipts, the impact becomes enormous. Just five percent adoption would mean around 200,000 businesses actively adding Bitcoin to their balance sheets. That represents a quiet, distributed revolution in how ordinary companies manage their finances.
Block employees acknowledged on X that the details surfaced early because Bitcoiners were carefully reviewing the Terms of Service update, joking that “our product announcement gets leaked bc bitcoiners scanning our TOS update.” The terms, last revised on March 16, 2026, confirm the auto-enablement for qualifying accounts in good standing.
The economics help drive adoption: Bitcoin payments carry zero processing fees through the end of 2026, then a flat one percent — much lower than typical card rates, with no chargeback risk. Everything integrates seamlessly with existing Square hardware and the point-of-sale app.
This rollout completes Block’s phased introduction that began in late 2025. From major brands like Shake Shack, Ben & Jerry’s, and SoFi Stadium to millions of small mom-and-pop shops, the change lowers the barrier for everyday businesses to accept Bitcoin while giving them straightforward tools to treat it as a reserve asset.
Whether used mainly for payments or gradually for holding, the infrastructure is now live at massive scale. In an era of fiat pressures and high payment fees, Square is helping normalize Bitcoin as both a practical medium of exchange and a sensible store of value for ordinary companies. The sats are starting to stack on corporate balance sheets, one Lightning payment at a time. Merchants should check their Square dashboard to review or adjust their settings.
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