Ready to buy your breakfast with Bitcoin? Square is making it easier

Square, the point-of-sale system owned by Jack Dorsey’s Block, is announcing a number of new upgrades today—including one that will make it easier for business owners to accept payments in Bitcoin.

On Wednesday, the company made three announcements:

• An expansion of its platform for restaurants (including AI-voice ordering and a bigger, broader Grubhub integration)
• A conversational AI assistant embedded in its dashboard to answer questions, called Square AI
• Square Bitcoin: An integrated Bitcoin payment and wallet system for business owners

The upgrades and announcements are designed to help business owners control their costs, dig up more insights within their data, and plan ahead with more confidence, Willem Avé, Square’s head of product, tells Fast Company.

“We’re focused on anything we can do to help small businesses compete better,” Avé says.

That includes a smattering of new and beefed-up features for restaurant operators, specifically, such as AI voiced ordering, which allows customers to call in and place an order with an AI assistant (while also answering questions about the menu and make customizations).

Meanwhile, a speedier kiosk will help orders get entered faster, and enhanced accounting and sales reports—plus an Order Guide—will help restaurateurs get a clearer picture of their costs and revenue.

Avé says that the voice-ordering feature is particularly interesting, as the technology has only recently become good enough to launch. At the beginning of this past summer, for example, it wouldn’t have worked, he says.

“We believe that the tech is finally here to build a natural, good, AI-based ordering system,” Avé adds.

‘The tech is there, the demand is there’

Perhaps the most interesting announcement of the day is the launch of Square Bitcoin, which allows businesses to accept Bitcoin payments, automatically store those payments in a designated wallet, convert other revenue to Bitcoin, and do it all with no processing fees through the end of next year.

“Square has always been about accepting any type of payment that comes across the counter,” Avé says, and so giving businesses the power to integrate with crypto in a relatively simple way was a natural step for the company.

“The tech is there, and the demand is there, and from a cost perspective, Bitcoin payments are cheaper” for businesses, he says.

While some large merchant chains accept cryptocurrency payments—a list that includes the Home Depot, Chipotle, and Whole Foods—it’s been, thus far, a difficult implementation for small companies.

Square’s announcement could change that, all while crypto adoption and prices reach a fever pitch. The timing isn’t necessarily a coincidence, as Avé says the company has been trying to move quicker as customer needs evolve.

“This release is highlighting that speed is the name of the game,” he says, “and we’re moving faster than ever.”