Square just made Bitcoin a checkout toggle.
Merchants can now enable Bitcoin payments on Square Register with no new staff training — a low-friction switch inside a checkout flow millions of businesses already use. This is how mainstream Bitcoin acceptance scales: not by replacing the point of sale, but by adding one option to it.
The week's other signals point the same direction — Bitcoin plugging into payment systems people already use. The Ark protocol settled its first real coffee purchase in Kenya, days after going live on mainnet. Tando's Ark-to-M-PESA bridge now makes 52 million Kenyans reachable, with recipients getting shillings instantly at zero routing fees. And in the Philippines, Bitcoin payments over Lightning reached GCash, the country's largest fintech app, with 94 million users.
On the regulatory side, a South African pancake seller who accepts and saves Bitcoin pushed back on draft rules she says target merchants like her: "Why am I a criminal for saving?"
The full brief also covers BTC Map's 204 net new merchants, recurring zero-fee disbursements across Kenya, Burundi, and Pakistan, and structured merchant onboarding in Cuba.
Sincerely the South African pancake seller is the most important news, not Square.
All the rest is garbage.