Bitcoin Forum

In a country like India were On-line retailing is growing, can bitcoin & other crypto-currencies play an role also can they be used for loyalty program's for off-line & on-line retailers ?

Yeah payment API can be added to e-store for that people who involved by leading the online retails in your country. Else you will not be able to have the bitcoin as a payment to purchase in the online stores.
I see the bitconnect and some other coins has been still active your country. Try to contact them to support the e store projects to make the more money.

I think it's very possible as long as there are companies or devlopers that facilitate it so it will be able to walk easily

but there is a problem that often occurs on the sale of goods offline prices tend to remain unchanged while crypto currency we all know the price is very volatile from time to time this will complicate the sellers and buyers because the value of goods that are not stabilized

Having bitcoin as a payment in online retailer shop is worst for the payers only not give burden to online store owners because bitcoin price will increase future since it is so volatile in nature. If you are payer to the site with the bitcoin you only loose the fees and the expected profit with the bitcoin have in future.
If they have a paypal or skrill or etc... nothing will be act lik bitcoin and will never also you loose your own money.

I think it is possible, but to be honest prices are quite high right now and fees are pretty much exorbitant. Sending just a few dollars will likely cost a huge chunk of the value due to fees. It will be plausible only if the platform will use other cryptocurrencies that have smaller transaction fees, like DOGE? Since those kinds of crypto have super small fees and its actually negligible.

Bitcoin can be used for anything fiat is used. India is a very connected to technology country, it's inevitable sooner or later Bitcoin start being used by retailers and loyalty programs. But now I'm not sure if India's government is against Bitcoin or not, I have seen some rumors that they were, especially because the several scam schemes being run there.

I guess so, the biggest factor there is how the working population receive Bitcoin. From what I head, India people are pretty much open to new technologies so on India BTC main becomes mainstream before countries with people who are afraid of virtual currency.

This can be easily fixed by using third party API such as Bitpay or Coinbase, bitcoins will be converted automatically into any currencies once the payment is done, retailers don't need to hassle themselves with volatility of cryptocurrency while spreading their service with more possibilities.

I rarely seen retailers developing their own payment system anyway, even steam uses Bitpay.

If the price of the goods are not so expensive then I agree with the idea of using another cryptocurrency instead of bitcoin since it will take a huge percentage of payment as transaction fees. Some other people already accept bitcoin as payment when selling digital goods. It's actually a nice idea to add cryptos as another mode of payment in online retailing. This would be done easier if the project will be able to get much more support.

I also support the use of other crpyto currencies, specially Litecoin, who acts as the Bitcoin's silver.

Bitcoin fees are high because it provide high amount of security to big transactions, but if your transaction is not big( for an example, buying coffee at a coffee shop), I am pretty sure that you don't need this amount of security that the bitcoin network provides and paying with an altcoin such as litecoin would be a very good solution to this case.

Fees are smaller, security is a bit smaller but you don't need it for buying a coffee.


 

If you are referring to a bit coin blockchain wallet site that supports paying via crypto, it would really be. Wallets must have like this, I know India is simply adopting bitcoin and embracing it's help to the economy.

Yes it can be, you only need someone that is very familiar with the blockchain technology and knows what are the things to do. Bitcoin and other cryptos are also adopted now in some stores here locally. But never seen a retailing company that adopted it already. If you are into loyalty program, cryptos are good for it.

Bitpay has even made it easy for some who may want to convert immediately and directly into fiats.
Some wallets have APIs like you said that can be integrated into an ecommerce site to be able to get exchanges done pretty fast.
I believe things are going to change pretty fast in coming years and there would be a lot of development, and it would be good for merchants who can be early adopters now. Early adopters are always the one to get the best out at the end.

I think Blockchain's Receive Payments API V2 is another good option for bitcoin payments online store integration

In current situation bitcoins can not be used for all online retailing because of the transaction fee so bitcoin community need take steps for reducing the bitcoin transaction fee in the coming years then many people will pay as bitcoin for buying their products.Currently only big trades are happening with bitcoins like buying bulk orders paying with bitcoin.

Considering the banking system integration is not great especially in rural areas according to different websites, I believe bitcoin can play a huge role, since it doesn't have a competitor, and implementing a banking system would be hard, the only thing I see that could be remotely competitive, is mobile banking which starting to get traction these days.

Certainly, cryptocurrency is volatile, but it must be a risk one is willing to take as a merchant to start something like this. While some are paying and the value increases, the same thing can happen the other way round, but at the end it can still be balanced out.

Yes, bitcoin has had some pretty huge spikes lately, but when I started few months back, I guess I have ended up having more than enough profit I could envisage from the growth in value of bitcoin alone after leaving some of the funds in the wallet a bit after.

Using another cryptocurrency in a e-store doesn't seem logical to me as no other cryptocurrency has a user-base like Bitcoin does. If a company or online store starts to accept another cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin just for the lower fees, they won't get a lot of customers using that currency. So if the time is not right in present, they should wait for some time until all the things get settled and the fees gets quite normal again and then they should start accepting Bitcoin, but i don't think using another digital currency can be a good idea for any store.

Yes, India is huge market and have kind of accept for bitcoin so it is good and you can try without problem.

if find many posts like this  will update it later so they can help you.

Yes it (bitcoin) can be used as like in the western countries where many stores and restaurants are accepting bitcoin as alternate payment method. But now observing the current scenario there is high fluctuation in the price and it would be difficult for retailers to set the price of a product or service in this instability.

Things would actually become easier as time goes on and I am sure once the scaling issue gets resolves, it would even make transactions easier than we can imagine probably with the deployment of LNs.

Although, it is always best for one to start when it is not a huge thing right now, that way, you can target the crypto enthusiasts into your store and get to keep some loyal ones. There are still some alts you can add to bitcoin like you said, but you have to be careful knowing Alt market can be crazy.

there is no doubt that any business done online like on-line retailing will be using bitcoin as means of payment, but as of now we can see that the transactions seems to be taking too long, i agree with the other posts that we could also use other crypto currency as payment, however if we do that, the problem will be the value of the coin, since we'll be needing to convert it to the altcoin and vice-versa, by this time, what i can see is another form of crypto currency will be used next to bitcoin, and we might have two dominant crypto currencies in the future,if the transactions become slower and slower.

You are worry about the payment delay right but most of bitcoin payment API will be faster than usual transfer speed of bitcoins. We have to get the payment in bitcoin means we need some wallet address added to the cart in its online store.
I see that you are worry about converting altcoins to btc. There are various exchange available in online so you can use that convert it. I understand that this double time work for you.

They can really play a huge role and there is no doubt about that.
I started some discount recently for those who may want to use cryptocurrency (Bitcoin and Eth for now) and I was surprised at the turn out in my country. A lot of people would really want to have a real life feel of what they are holding and the ability to start now when things are still fresh will make you to pull some weight to have some loyal customers in the long run.

You can start accepting bitcoin as mode of payment give customer an option by accepting digital currency but you need to consider the volatility of bitcoin. Your income in bitcoin would be decrease/increase in the future but if you take payment in term of bitcoin would be your additional investment much better to hold it for long period of time.

Also that is one of the good thing to promote crypto currency in your country even we all know that your government supports bitcoin but not all people in india aware in digital currency by the help of your business it will be more popular in a couple of years.

Bitcoin and online  retailing is  good and its possible that it can happen to the whole country  but for now  some places is use it if ever happen that we can use our bitcoin  in retailing its better  and good but for  now maybe  we consider first  the  other things  like  if people will be like it or even our government will accept this idea.

Of course, Bitcoin was initially design to be a online payment right? P2P without any third party like banks. So its really applicable for India's booming online retailing business. But we all know that the main hindrance for bitcoin to accepted as payment options is the high transaction fee and slow confirmation. And just a few days ago, we have heard that Steam stops accepting bitcoin as payment because of this issue. But I believed in the future we will see a lot of merchants accepting bitcoin if this whole issue can be fixed. Lighting Network (LN) could be the one. It hasn't been implemented yet but I just hope this will be the solution(long/short).

It could possibly happen. Many online retail stores accept bitcoin and as more stores adapt them, others would possibly follow suit. It’s easily possible online.

I just do not understand what you're talking about, because to date, my transaction has lasted from the first of January until today and Bitcoin has not yet come to my wallet. Transactions have become quite friends and still last very long. I do not understand at all, because it's possible that my transaction is suspended. So what can be the business with Bitcoin?

I think retailers should not use bitcoin to trade because you know that bitcoin fees are so high that usually every retail order is not too big so customers will not be willing to pay a large fee. for your transaction. I think using bitcoin for exchanges like buying real estate, housing, cars ... is very reasonable because these items are of great value so people are willing to spend 20-50 $ for the fee Because it's fast and safe.

It depends, if retailers are risk taker and wanting to have more bitcoin in the future they will make bitcoin part of their mode of payments. Also it is online shoppe the transaction time is not concern here since almost all online shoppe process the transaction within 2 -3 days that is why it is ok to used bitcoin to purchase online.

It is ok with the retailer since he is only accepting Bitcoin from the customer, the problem here lies if the customer is ok with paying 10 to 20 dollars for a 50 dollar item.  I do not think that Bitcoin is wise to use in an online Retail store, I would vote for altcoin instead for very low transaction fee.  Bitcoin is great for online shopping if it is a big order else, we will beending  paying almost twice the original amount due to the Bitcoin transaction fee.

People are always saying "Lightning network will fix it all and we will be able to send dust payments".
You just forgot to mention that ALL new users will need to pay the regular fee, as opening and closing channels within the lightning network costs even more fee then just broadcasting a regular transaction.


Also, it will take years until people will actually use it, we can see how Segwit address came out, and few months after, 95% of the transactions are done by non-segwit addresses.
Don't expect that the release of Lightning network is going to be a magic solution to the situation, it has it's own problems.