No. This means you can pay a bitcoin transaction/invoice directly from your USD balance. They’ll automatically convert the equivalent bitcoin and pay the invoice. Strike has done this for several years and it’s a feature many have been waiting for cashapp to support.
Discussion
Oh right, I missed that the original charge was expresssd as bitcoin. And now I realize that I have no clue if cashapp charged a 2-3% fee on fiat (not a user). If so, seems a merchant could give themselves a 2-3% tip by selecting bitcoin invoice, prividdd it doesn't spook customers. Or am I too optimistic?
If a Square merchant allows customers to pay with cashapp, there is no fee. But if the customer uses the cashapp visa debit card, then the Square merchant would incur the same card fees as any other Visa card. If the Square merchant accepts bitcoin payments, then I believe there are no processing fees until 2027. After that, we’ll have to wait and see. As for whether the merchant “tips” themselves this way, it depends whether they bake the processing fees into their prices or not. Some Square merchants manually add a service charge when paying with paying with cards to cover the card fees.
Thanks for the breakdown. Will educate a merchant next chance I get 🫡
"Some Square merchants manually add a service charge when paying with paying with cards to cover the card fees"
This is good to know. I figured Square was likely baking the card fees right into the service. Instead, it sounds like merchants actually already have the option to not 'tip' themselves the amount of the card fees if the customer is paying in btc (offering a lower cost to the customer does tend to lead to having more customers after all).
The merchant pays the processing fee regardless of how much they charge, just like with any other card processor. What I’ve often seen is merchants advertising a “cash” price and then add their own surcharge for card purchases to offset what Square deducts from the transactions.
ah... i see.
With no card fees, since Square will be charging a lower (or initially zero) processing fee to the merchant for transactions in BTC, hopefully, Square will ultimately make it easier for the merchant to choose to automatically pass those lower processing costs on to the customer.
... and same goes for any processing cost savings just because the customer uses CashApp.
Yea that would be a nice feature to have. What I would do for now as merchant would be to advertise one price for paying with cash/bitcoin, and then a 3% up charge for anyone wanting to pay with cards.