Executive Summary
Merchant acceptance continued to deepen geographically this week, with Bolivia doubling its mapped bitcoin-accepting locations since May and the Kibera neighborhood onboarding more than 200 everyday merchants. On the data side, BTC Map now lists 1,733 Square-linked merchants in the U.S.—around 52% of all mapped U.S. locations—with a similar number still in the backlog, underscoring the scale of enterprise-capable rails. Lightning infrastructure is being used at scale, with Tando processing over 3 million Lightning transactions bridging bitcoin and M‑PESA, while Cash App tests direct card spending from users’ bitcoin balances. At the same time, temporary disablement of some QR-based integrations and removal of several large chains from local maps highlight that corporate policy shifts can reduce acceptance even as overall capacity grows.
1) Merchant & Enterprise Adoption
Merchant networks are thickening across Latin America and African neighborhoods, with both city-level datasets and individual shops adding bitcoin as a payment option.
- In Bolivia, mapped merchants accepting bitcoin as a payment method have doubled from 33 locations in May 2025 to 70 by early December, including 34 in La Paz, 20 in Cochabamba, and additional sites in Santa Cruz, Tarija, Pando, Beni, and Potosí.
- In Kibera, community organizer Ronnie onboarded over 200 local merchants—from food stalls to washrooms—to accept bitcoin for daily essentials and set up a peer-to-peer marketplace that cuts transaction fees for small business owners.
- Ebenezer Shop in Joe Slovo now accepts bitcoin as a payment option, with customers paying by simply scanning and completing the transaction without bank cards or queues, turning the shop into a place where community members can spend bitcoin with confidence.
- Additional small businesses highlighted this week include Chips Pot and BurgerChickenCo, which share BTC Map listings and payment addresses such as burgerchickenandco@blink.sv and jaredonsongo@blink.sv, as well as La Cafeteria, which was set up to receive bitcoin for the season.
- On El Salvador’s Bitcoin Coast, a new merchant was added in El Tunco, with visitors encouraged to “stop by and pay with Bitcoin” when in the area.
2) Payment Infrastructure
Infrastructure developments focused on making bitcoin usable at checkout via Lightning and existing payment apps, from online flows to card-based experiments.
- Merchant GeeWiz describes two bitcoin payment paths at checkout: customers can choose “Bitcoin Lightning” and either open their Lightning wallet on mobile or scan a Lightning QR code on desktop, or they can select an exchange wallet option (Luno, Binance, or VALR) and pay by opening the exchange app or scanning a QR code with the app’s built-in scanner.
- Mavapay showcased its integration with BTCPay Server as an “Africa payment rail through bitcoin lightning,” explicitly framing bitcoin as “a payment infrastructure for Africans, by Africans.”
- Cash App is testing functionality that lets users spend directly from their bitcoin balances using the Cash App Card; after a successful live test, the product lead noted they would “tighten up the last 20% and release it officially” if there is sufficient customer demand, while one user commented that “Cash App Card is the only debit card that could do this.”
3) Usage Metrics
Usage metrics this week highlight both high-volume Lightning activity and improving visibility into merchant coverage through mapping tools.
- Sabina Gitau, co‑founder of Tando, is credited with unlocking real‑world spending and cross‑border remittances by processing over 3 million Lightning transactions that bridge bitcoin and M‑PESA, addressing liquidity constraints for local merchants.
- BTC Map reports that 1,733 Square-linked merchants have been added in the U.S.; this set is said to represent 52% of all mapped U.S. locations (including ATMs), with more than 1,700 additional places still sitting in the backlog.
4) Regulatory & Policy Developments
No new government regulations surfaced this week, but platform and retailer policy decisions directly impacted where bitcoin payments remain available.
- The ability to scan Snapscan QR codes and pay with bitcoin was reported as “temporarily disabled for an unknown reason,” with users invited to complete a form if they want the functionality re‑enabled.
- A subsequent update noted that Shoprite and Checkers were “temporarily disabled from accepting BTC as payment,” signaling that some large retailers currently cannot process bitcoin transactions despite prior integrations.
- On El Salvador’s Bitcoin Coast, two large restaurant brands—Don Pollo and Pollo Campestre—were removed from the La Libertad city zone map after they no longer had their Chivo POS terminals and therefore no longer accepted bitcoin.
5) Strategic Outlook
Taken together, this week’s signals point to an adoption pattern driven by dense neighborhood merchant networks, interoperable checkout flows, and high-throughput Lightning services rather than isolated flagship integrations. Growth in mapped merchants from Bolivia to Kibera, multi-path checkout options like those at GeeWiz, and the more than 3 million Lightning transactions processed by Tando all indicate practical, recurring payment usage. At the same time, temporary shutdowns of QR bridges, POS terminals, and some branded locations show that reliance on specific intermediaries introduces fragility, underscoring the value of open, wallet-agnostic rails and accurate merchant mapping as bitcoin continues to mature as a payment rail.
