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Toast shares fell more than 4.5% in midday trading on Wednesday after Block's Square unveiled an AI voice kiosk for restaurants. Square Kiosk pairs a 21.5-inch touchscreen with a conversational voice system that understands a quick-service restaurant's full menu in real time. Customers can place and change orders, ask about ingredients, and request substitutions. It costs $1,999 plus a $99 monthly software fee per device, and requires a Square Plus or Premium subscription. Investors fear added competition for Toast, which makes its own restaurant kiosks. In the second quarter, Toast reported revenue of $1.91 billion, up 23%, and net income of $154 million, up 93%. Its stock is down 17% this year.

The FTC is investigating frozen Square accounts. Alexa Alix Last Updated: October 13, 2026 3 minutes read The FTC filed a petition on October 7 seeking to enforce a document demand against Block, parent company of Square and Cash App. Bloomberg reported the next day that the investigation concerns whether customers received adequate help with frozen or deactivated accounts. If you accept payments through Square, the issue is access to money you have already collected. The filing does not establish that Block broke the law, and it creates no refund entitlement. It does give you a reason to check how much working capital depends on a payment provider releasing funds on schedule. What the public record shows. The Northern District of California docket confirms an October 7 petition to enforce a civil investigative demand, with redacted supporting material and a sealing motion. This is a records enforcement proceeding, not a judgment on merchant claims. Bloomberg's reporting says the FTC opened the investigation in 2025 and sought records in January after receiving more than 1,500 complaints. That describes an inquiry into customer support, not a finding that each complaint was valid. Digital Transactions reported allegations involving frozen Square balances, along with Block's statement that it was working constructively with the agency. Neither the allegations nor the response tells an individual seller when funds become available. Booked revenue and spendable cash are different numbers. Your sales dashboard and your bank balance answer different questions. An order counts toward revenue while its payment sits behind a reserve, verification request, dispute, or account restriction. Build your cash forecast around expected bank deposits. Keep processor balances in a separate column with the conditions attached to their release noted. If the release date is unknown, do not treat that money as available for payroll. A business with $20,000 in essential weekly payments needs $40,000 in replacement liquidity to absorb a two-week interruption, before funding any new inventory. That is a planning example rather than a claim about Square's normal holding period. The same timing problem shows up elsewhere: Amazon's delivery-based reserves delay usable cash on a different platform under different rules. When an account gets restricted, an organized record makes it faster to explain your business and separate the disputed balance from everything else. Assemble it now, while reports are easy to pull. Keep current business details, bank account information, product descriptions, supplier invoices, fulfillment records, and relevant payment history. Store verification submissions and support responses with their dates. Do not send sensitive documents through unsolicited links. Use the provider's authenticated support process. If a restriction happens, ask three questions: what information is missing, which transactions or balance are affected, and what the next review step is. Save case numbers and keep submissions connected in one timeline rather than opening disconnected tickets. A support acknowledgment is not a cleared payout. Update your cash forecast when you have a reliable release date or the deposit lands. Plan continuity without evading a restriction. Check whether you have an approved alternative payment route for future orders. Review its fees, settlement timing, technical setup, and permitted business categories before counting on it during peak season. Do not use a second account to bypass a provider's restriction. Resolve the underlying issue through the applicable terms. A second checkout option also cannot retrieve funds held by the first provider. Payment continuity and recovery of an existing balance need separate plans. If a material balance stays inaccessible, consult an adviser about your contract and available remedies. Preserve the evidence rather than treating a news story as account-specific advice. What to watch for. The next meaningful development is a public ruling or further filing explaining the FTC's demand and Block's response. Any eventual enforcement action would carry its own terms before sellers could infer a remedy. For now, compare your next four weeks of required payments against cash already in the bank. Identify which supplier order, ad payment, or payroll date depends on a pending payout, then assign that gap a funding decision while you still have time.

Square to offer 3% Bitcoin rewards for credit card holders. Block is reportedly adding a Bitcoin option to the Square Credit Card, extending its push to make Bitcoin part of everyday business spending 2 hours ago Sponsored: CryptoSlots - Cryptoslots Play now! Square Credit Card holders will soon be able to earn 3% back in Bitcoin on their purchases. That is the latest move from Block Inc., the parent company of Square, which keeps finding new places to put Bitcoin. Reports of the announcement surfaced on October 13, 2026, with outlets including Bitcoin Magazine covering the news. What Block is rolling out. The core change is simple. Instead of only taking rewards as dollars, Square Credit Card users will reportedly be able to receive 3% cash back paid in Bitcoin. Block has not yet published the full terms. Eligibility rules, timing and the exact mechanics of how the Bitcoin gets delivered are still to come. The card itself just went through a makeover. In August 2026, Square redesigned the product to offer unlimited 3% cash back on Square Bill Pay transactions and 1.5% back on everything else. Under that structure, cardholders can redeem rewards in a few ways. Options include cash deposits, statement credits, or fee-free processing, and the card runs on the American Express network. Part of a bigger Bitcoin playbook. This is not Block's first attempt to wire Bitcoin into Square's merchant ecosystem. Throughout 2025 and 2026, the company, led by co-founder Jack Dorsey, has shipped a steady stream of Bitcoin features. AI, tech, and the markets they move - in one daily briefing. Daily. Free. Join 34,000+ readers across crypto, finance, and policy. Starting in late 2025, Block rolled out Bitcoin acceptance tools for millions of merchants. Those payments come with zero fees through 2026. Merchants can also automatically convert a portion of their card sales into Bitcoin. On the consumer side, Cash App runs its own promotion. Users can earn 5% back in Bitcoin on purchases made at Square merchants until December 31, 2026, capped at $30 per month. Why the timing matters. The August redesign set the table. With 3% unlimited cash back on Bill Pay and 1.5% elsewhere, Square had already built a rewards structure designed to keep business spending inside its ecosystem. Adding Bitcoin as a payout gives Block a way to differentiate the card. Plenty of business cards offer cash back, but few let small business owners quietly build a Bitcoin position through routine expenses like vendor bills. What this means for merchants and the market. That volatility cuts both ways. A cash-back reward paid in Bitcoin can be worth more or less than its dollar equivalent depending on when it is redeemed and held. Still, several things are worth watching before anyone gets too excited. The first is the fine print: eligibility, rollout timing, and whether the 3% Bitcoin rate carries the same conditions as the existing cash rewards. The second is the calendar. Both the zero-fee merchant Bitcoin payments and the 5% Cash App promotion are tied to 2026, so what Block does with those incentives after December 31, 2026 will say a lot about how permanent this push really is. Disclosure: This article was edited by Kaye Quema. For more information on how Cryptobriefing create and review content, see its Editorial Policy.