Can a merchant using Square Register accept bitcoins?

Question

Square's marketing department appears to be successful at convincing some retailers to chuck their old register and instead buy an iPad, receipt printer and cash drawer and use the Square Register app instead.

Can this same set of hardware be used to also accept bitcoin payments? Is there an app for accepting Bitcoin payments that will work on the iPad? If so, can multiple apps run simultaneously? Could the retailer print some type of receipt?

[Assuming the Internet access is through a Wi-Fi access point.]

Answer 1

Bit-Pay has a mobile app that allows acceptance of mobile payments. It's not native for the iPad, but it should work, albeit at a lower resolution. There are a few other iPad apps, but none that implement any sort of payment functionality.

Answer 2

If you'd be using solely Bitcoins, you wouldn't need the cash drawer (unless if you'd want to use physical Bitcoins, which would be awesome in itself). Alternatively, you could set it up so Bitcoins would be an alternative way of paying.

As both the printer and the cash drawer appear not to be produced by the same company that delivers the app, one can assume the integration with that hardware shouldn't be a problem. Since Bit-Pay has already proven that one can accept Bitcoin payments on the iOS, integration with Bitcoin is quite possible (although how easy still remains a question).

Generally, anything that can be done with regular cash can also be done with Bitcoins, it's just a matter of how much work one needs to put in.