Square Gets The Patent Approval For Digital Currency Payment System
Square Inc., a digital payments company has recently secured a patent from the USPTO for a new payment network which allows merchants to accept payments in any type of currency, including cryptocurrency. The new payment network will allow merchants to accept traditional fiat as well as crypto payments and cash-out in the currency of their choice.
The official patent application documents note: “The disclosed technology addresses the need in the art for a payment service capable of accepting a greater diversity of currencies…including virtual currencies including cryptocurrencies (bitcoin, ether, etc.)…than a traditional payment system in a transaction between a customer and a merchant, and specifically for a payment service to solve or ameliorate problems germane to transactions with such currencies. Specifically, the payment service described herein can facilitate real-time (or substantially real-time) transactions, allowing a customer to pay in any currency of their choice, while the merchant can receive payment in a currency of their choice.”
One important issue that the Square’s payment network addresses is that it will allow cryptocurrency transactions to take place at the same speed as other traditional transactions, like credit cards. This shall be done over a private blockchain network that can record all transactions in real-time.
The square patent also notes that another way to eliminate the transaction latency would be allowing the payment network to take the custody of users funds. This will increase the transaction speed as Square will only have to update its internal ledger instead of writing the entire transaction on the blockchain network.
Square already has a strong foothold in the financial payments market allowing several merchants to accept card or mobile payments. Securing the latest patent will also allow merchants to accept crypto payments without going through the hassles of manually converting cryptocurrency to fiat.
Apart from Square, there are other players who are already working on making it easy for merchants to accept crypto payments and, in turn, easy for users to spend their digital holdings. Earlier this month, NYSE parent Intercontinental Exchange announced the launch of Bakkt - a global platform for digital assets in collaboration with companies like Microsoft and Starbucks.
Note that the patent application approval doesn’t assure about Square launching this product into the market. Last week, the Bank of America filed a patent application for a blockchain-system for secure storage of digital assets in the enterprise environment.