With Patent Filing, Square Circles Cryptos For Payments At POS

Much has been made about cryptocurrencies and the speculation that has marked trading activity in that arena.

Much has been made about the fact that, insofar as they can be used in everyday commerce, cryptocurrencies have not made much headway.

That may be about to change if payments firm Square gets its way. The company has a patent in place that will let merchants accept payments across cryptos – most notably, perhaps, bitcoin, the marquee name in the space.

The company filed a patent that was published on Aug. 21 and has been approved by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The patent was first filed in September of 2017, noted ccn.com on Wednesday. The process is one where merchants can accept cryptocurrencies in addition to other payment types, and “cash out” in a range of options as well.

Said Square in the filing: “The disclosed technology addresses the need in the art for a payment service capable of accepting a greater diversity of currencies … including virtual currencies and cryptocurrencies (bitcoin, ether, etc.).”

The moves come against a backdrop where Square CEO Jack Dorsey has stated that cryptos can and indeed should be used for transactions.

As noted by ccn.com, Square is not in fact the first processor that would let merchants take cryptocurrency as payment that is in turn converted into other, local (fiat) currencies. The site pointed to BitPay, which has accepted bitcoin as payment for the past seven years. The Square offering would be available to the merchants that bring the extant POS system on board or who are already part of the installed base.

The much-cited latency effect in bitcoin, where transactions take longer to process, have been addressed via private blockchain, according to the site – to the extent that transactions can be completed in the timeframe (roughly) that marks a credit card transaction. And in one possible use case, the patent has drawings that seem to allude to bitcoin being used through the Square Cash app – which, in turn, allows for bitcoin trading.