Cash App Introduces Paid in Bitcoin, BTC Roundup and Lightning Network Services

At the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami, Block, Inc., formerly Square, Inc., announced three new bitcoin services for the company’s mobile payment platform. The mobile payment platform Cash App will feature a “paid in bitcoin” service that allows users to auto-invest their work pay into bitcoin.

Cash App Adds 3 New Bitcoin Services

Jack Dorsey’s Block announced in Miami that the Cash App mobile payment system will offer three new features. The San Francisco company explained that the first feature will be a “paid in bitcoin” service that allows people to convert their pay into bitcoin (BTC).

Cash App users will be able to convert 1% or up to 100% of their payroll into the leading crypto asset. The Block, which also manages Spiral, TIDAL, and TBD, explained at the conference that the team has been working on the idea since 2019.

The next service the company revealed was a bitcoin round-up service which basically allows Cash App users to round up spare change from purchases into bitcoin (BTC). Essentially, the user’s Cash App card transactions will round up the purchases and automatically transfer the change to the user’s BTC wallet.

Block is not the first firm to introduce paid in bitcoin services or BTC round-up services, as the concepts have been around for quite some time. For instance, people can leverage Coinbase or Bitwage to be paid in crypto as well, and Bundil and Roundlyx offer BTC round-up products.

The third feature Cash App announced at the Miami bitcoin conference was “Lightning Network (LN) Receives” with a seamless Bitcoin UX. The Bitcoin UX will leverage unified QR codes that utilize the Bitcoin Improvement Proposal BIP 21.

The QR code can combine both Lightning Network invoices and onchain information to make the process easier for Cash App users. Cash App already allowed LN payments since its introduction in January, but now users can leverage unified QR receive codes in order to accept LN payments directly. The move by Cash App follows the Atlanta-based payment processor Bitpay announcing LN support on Wednesday.

Recent Breach Leaves 8 Million Cash App Customers Exposed

The Cash App news follows the firm’s issues with a former employee that caused a massive data breach. Reports show that 8 million Cash App users were affected as the former employee was accused of downloading information tied to customers in December.

The report from the Block claims that the download took place after the employee left the company. While the downloaded data does not contain bank info, usernames, passwords, or social security numbers, the information did contain the users’ brokerage account numbers and full names.