For many months now, investors and companies from across the globe have been yearning for a system that would allow them to accept payments in form Bitcoin. That dream has now come to fruition – Square, a renowned digital payments firm has successfully managed to secure patent for establishment of a payment network that will give merchants an opportunity to accept payment for goods and services in any form of currency.
As noted by CCN, public documents available show that U.S Patent & Trademark Office has finally approved Square application to a unique patent system that will allow businesses to receive payment in form of cryptocurrencies. This means that you will not only be able to use fiat currencies to pay for services but also use your digital currencies for the same purposes. The firm applied for this patent back in September last year 2017.
Snip View of Patent Approval Document
In one section of the approval document states that the disclosed technology meets the need to have a payment service that has the ability to accept payment for goods and services securely in a larger currency diversity including digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ether. The statement also a step further to state that the payment gateway will be able to facilitate real time transactions, allow clients from different parts of the globe to pay for goods and services in any currency that they prefer. The merchants on the other hand will have an opportunity to receive payment in their preferred currency.
Solving Bitcoin Transaction Latency
It is also important to note that the patent also gives clear details of the POS system that is designed to eliminate latency that is associated with virtually all cryptocurrency transactions. For example bitcoin transactions that are considered to be slow at times will be approved or done at the same speed as the conventional credit card transactions.
The payment service will be able to achieve this goal by creating and maintaining a private blockchain network that will be designed to record all transactions made from the Square managed wallets in real time, the network will also allow POS System to accurately identify the changed balances in the accounts before the transactions are written or transferred to the public blockchain.
Even though this advancement will not get rid or prevent double spend attacks, it effectively transfers the risk from the merchant to the payment service provider who in this case will be Square. Another section of the patent also notes that the transaction latency can also be eliminated if the user funds are kept by the payment network itself. If that happens, Square will only need to update its internal ledger instead of writing every transaction to the blockchain network.
Will Square Roll Out Bitcoin Payment Service
There is no guarantee that following the approval of the patent that Square will actually go ahead and roll the bitcoin payment service. It could follow the footsteps of Bank of America, which has applied for multiple patterns related to blockchain but the bank is yet to launch any product.
However, we cannot afford to ignore the fact that Square is a privately owned financial service provider that is run by a very vocal cryptocurrency support. So, we could see the first crypto payment network in the next couple of months.
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