Square further detailed how it would handle payment disputes arising from bitcoin transactions. Notably, the company stressed that it is not directly involved in the transaction, writing:“Bitcoin payment disputes should be resolved between the Square merchant and buyer, without Square’s intervention.”Further, refunds will be treated the same as other payment methods. Customers will receive their refund in the “original payment form.” Additionally, if merchants do not want to accept bitcoin payments they can opt out by contacting Square customer service.No commentThough Square did answer some questions, it didn’t elaborate on other queries.Most notably, it did not indicate how it would manage the risk of zero-confirmation transactions or comment formally on the recent IRS ruling and if Square Market merchants would be affected.Furthermore, it did not comment on whether Apple’s anti-bitcoin position will affect purchases made over the Square merchant app, or how long it has been monitoring the bitcoin space.ImpactStill, there could be larger implications to Square’s decision to take a more background approach to bitcoin with its Square Market. Namely, merchants may not realize that an increase in sales is attributable to bitcoin.Notably, other merchant marketplace providers offer the ability for merchants to gain this insight.For example, a representative of Shopify, which offers bitcoin as a payment methods to its 70,000+ online merchants, indicated that those who enroll in its Shopify Basic service can manually send “all orders through a payment method-style export.”According to Shopify, this lets merchants tell how much money they took from a certain payment gateway, which in turn lets them assess their success accepting bitcoin.Members of its Professional Plan service can see this information automatically.Still, the service is more affordable than Stripe’s proposed processing plan, which charges 2.9% plus an additional 30 cents per transaction.Industry reactionDespite the questions about how Square has gone about testing bitcoin thus far, even those who are contributing for similar business see the move as a boon for the ecosystem at large.Hieu Bui, CEO for bitcoin-centric marketplace BitDazzle, welcomed Square to the ecosystem, but stressed that Square might not be using the Bitcoin protocol or the bitcoin ecosystem to its fullest potential with the decision.“I believe there are benefits to having sellers directly interact with the bitcoin ecosystem, especially as more and more people have bitcoin to spend. So, our sellers benefit from the commerce as well as growing their base of shoppers.”Bui also saw the bigger picture implications of Square’s decision, suggesting that PayPal could easily follow a similar route, where benefits are lost in translation, should it decide to accept bitcoin.BitDazzle charges a monthly fee for its service, which allows it to keep bitcoin transaction costs in line with the capabilities of the protocol.Mitchell Callahan, a developer behind the merchant-friendly point-of-sale tool PocketPOS, believes that Square is right to focus on the end result, facilitating BTC payments, even at the potential expense of merchant awareness about bitcoin as a payment option.“Making this process simple is key as merchants have a lot to worry about. Today, most people likely don’t care how Visa or debit works, they just need to make sure they can accept payment easily and it goes into their bank account.”Plus, as Callahan indicates, the fact that Square is working with bitcoin at all is noteworthy, as it could signal that the company may be open to expanding the program, and adding millions of merchants to the bitcoin network in the process.Coinbasee-commercemerchantspaymentssquareOriginal author: Pete Rizzo
