Square just opened the Bitcoin floodgates. Here’s why it matters for your store. In November 2025, something quietly remarkable happened: Square made Bitcoin payments available to eligible US merchants. Your neighborhood coffee shop can now accept Bitcoin as easily as they swipe your credit card. Payments are confirmed in seconds via the Lightning Network. There are no chargebacks. And through 2026, it costs merchants nothing. This isn’t a crypto experiment. It’s Jack Dorsey’s Block company betting that Bitcoin belongs at the point of sale, powered by the Lightning Network and integrated directly into the hardware millions of businesses already use. But to see this as merely another payment option misses the larger story. Square’s move sits at the intersection of several shifts reshaping commerce: the rise of digital wallets, the emergence of alternative payment rails, and a practical question about whether the 2-3% credit card processing fees on every transaction is actually inevitable.…