At San Franciscos Buyers Best Friend, a worker demonstrates the companys custom-built bitcoin payments system. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Over the past year, its become a lot easier to buy bitcoin, thanks to services such as Coinbase. And thanks to retailers such as Overstock.com and TigerDirect, its now a lot easier to to spend them online. But theres still one big pothole in bitcoins bumpy road to mainstream adoption: Your local coffee shop.

Thats because most cash register software still doesnt support the worlds most popular digital currency. But the situation is about to change, according to Square CEO Jack Dorsey. He says that Square is building a register that will allow companies to accept bitcoin as well as Apples new contactless payment system, Apple Pay.

Were building a register so that sellers can accept a credit card, so they can accept cash, so they can accept a cheque, so they can accept Bitcoin and so they can accept any form of payment that comes across the counter including future ones and burgeoning ones like Apple Pay, Dorsey told the CBC this week, speaking at the opening of Squares new Canadian offices in Kitchener, Ontario.

Reached Monday, the company didnt have any word on when its bitcoin-ready register might be on the market. But it said say that it wants to support new types of payment systems. Square sellers should never have to miss out on a sale. They should be able to accept any form of payment, said Square spokesman Johnny Brackett.

Today, shops such as Buyers Best Friend in San Francisco and restaurants such as the Pink Cow in Tokyo accept payments in bitcoin. Basically, you hold your smartphone up to a scanner at the cash register. But such systems can be difficult for businesses to set up. Square, whose in-person payment systems are already used by so many businesses, could potentially make it much easier for small stores and restaurants to accept bitcoin, a new kind of currency that exists only on the internet.

Though many believe bitcoin can remake the way we handle moneyremoving some of the control traditional exhibited by big banks and government organizationsit is still a long way from reaching the mainstream. But with company such as Overstock now accepting bitocin payments across the globe and Square flirting with a bitcoin register, the currency is inching closer.

Home Page Photo: David Shankbone

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Square Is Making a Register That Takes Bitcoin and Apple Pay