Bitcoin Forum

Tiger Direct Processes $500,000 in Bitcoin Payments

On Thursday, January 23, 2014, Tiger Direct announced they would start accepting bitcoin as an alternative payment method. While Tiger Direct isn’t the first major online retailer to start accepting bitcoins, they are the first major online electronics retailer to do so.

The Tiger Direct website offers over 200,000 products and is a popular shopping destination for PC users. According to Steven Leeds, the marketing chief at Tiger Direct, “With individuals building their own high-powered PCs with parts offered on our site to mine Bitcoins, it’s a logical fit.”

Tiger Direct has already started utilizing this acceptance as an opportunity to market their Bitcoin mining catalog. Tiger Direct has also partnered with AMD in order to offer a variety of mining-friendly graphic cards.

Since their Thursday announcement, Tiger Direct has processed more than $500,000 in Bitcoin payments. These total was spent on over 2500 separate orders. According to Tiger Direct, $250,000 of that was processed in the first 17 hours following their announcement. Overall, the company processes approximately $2 billion in purchases each year.

http://www.josic.com/tiger-direct-processes-500000-in949-bitcoin-payments

So lets say they are paying 2% on plastic charges.... 1% for bitpay.  So a 1% saving on every transaction.  That's  $5,000 in added revenue/savings just by accepting bitcoin.  That's pretty cool.

I'd be surprised if a big retailer was paying 2%, more likely around 1.3%.

made $500,000?
more like made $500,000 sales  ;)

once the miners spend their coins, i don't think you will see these numbers sustain themselves.

I don't work in finance or billing etc etc so I have no knowledge of this stuff aside from what I've googled or read about. I've never seen anything below 2% mentioned.  I remember the CEO of overstock.com saying in a interview that they pay 2% on transactions.  Am I wrong to think 2% is the lowest ?  Do you have any references showing otherwise ?

My earlier post was just a guess of course, obviously I don't know the financial working of tigerdirect  :)

Tigerdirect processes more orders than overstock.
If amazon starts accepting btc, I doubt that they would agree to 2%.

Back on track, this is cool. Two (2) big retailers started accepting btc, who is next?

The 2% reference was to credit card companies... not bitcoin..... ive never seen higher than 1% for bitcoin payment processors. Thats the industry standard.  There's cheaper options where you can pay a monthly payment and get 0% transactions, but thats up for the company to decide if its worth it.  Anyways 2% was in reference to credit card payment processors, not bitcoin payment processors where ive never seen more than 1% being charged to merchants.

Lets say 1%?? Why should we say such things?

https://bitpay.com/pricing

This makes huge savings for a big company.

I wonder when a big retailer in Europe starts accepting Bitcoin.

I went with 1% because thats their basic price package.  Its just a guess since we dont know what package they go with.  It could certainly be less.  Point was they are saving quite a bit of money simply by accepting bitcoin  ;)

There will be a big drop-off in Bitcoin sales after the initial hype dies down, but all we need is for the sales to steadily continue as all businesses benefit greatly from the free advertisement they get just by being associated with Bitcoin. Hopefully bigger businesses will soon take note.

This is a valid point/argument about bitcoin in general.  Most people spending bitcoins are people who are spending their profits.  Very few people are going out converting fiat to bitcon (paying a fee on it) just to buy something with bitcoin (again paying another fee on that).  There still needs to be some incentives for everyday consumers to use bitcoin ,  right now its a niche thing where people are either 1) spending profits  2) doing it because they think it's cool.

As new consumer services come to the market, and when bitcoin developers change the way minning fees work we could potentially see a situation where suddenly it makes sense and is practical for the average consumer to spend bitcoin.  Imagine if you could use a bitcoin card the same way you use your debit card... its taken out of your bank, you aren't paying fees on that transaction.  Thats one potential solution or option.   Other solutions are things like merchants giving discounts to users who use bitcoin.

Anyways, it will be interesting to see how this unfolds. Because it is true right now that bitcoin isn't practical for day to day shopping, unless maybe it was for microtransactions.

Ordered from TD on 31/1/14, gave them a call this morning (3/2/14) to see why order was stuck "In Process". To my surprise they asked me what the wallet id & transaction id are,  Shocked RUFKM? Did they NOT hire a BTC pro to set them up? There are api's that handle all that, might want to add that info into the order database ya think..  Anyway IMHO there is not a snowballs chance in hell that they took in 250K or what ever they claim, fingers crossed I get the AX1200's...

I believe they took in over 150k, as I spent $1200 alone in bitcoin myself at Tigerdirect.  I am sure many other have done the same.  I need additional hardware to support my mining and I like Tigerdirect speed and service.  I will be spending even more bitcoin there in the future. 

Mtnminer

Asking a customer for their details is normal.  I dont understand what the problem was.  Places have my card info but they still usually ask me for it when I have a dispute.  More likely than not they want to verify you are the person who made the transaction.

lieferservice.de (also available in belgium, austria and the netherlands)
parfuemerie.de (portal for cosmetics and parfums, don't know if they accept customers outside germany)

I'd love more to come ... but it's a start

saw a statement on reddit az-europe will accept bitcoins in the next days

http://az-europe.eu/de

never heard of this shop, its from the slowakei, it has ... everything!

Same, though I'd never heard of Overstock or Tigerdirect either.

At 2 billion in sales, probably more like 0.1%, card merchants will fight for your business and give you lower rates, and at 2 million in profit with 0.1% I can see it being around there. The person who sells the credit card service makes a % can be from 10% and above of all profit made from the transaction % so at 0.1% the person who signed them up will make $200,000 yearly just from the account.

Overstock, for US customer only.. cant pay in BTC when ordering from Canada :(

Seems to be the same for TigerDirect..  Can find a way to checkout in BTC into TigerDirect.CA  :(

Let the time passes, hope they will like this new way of receving funds and spread it to other countries :)

Cya All !!!

That's pretty neat.. Wish more retailors will ditch cc card and join the bitcoin movement!

 ;D :o

I'd love to see amazon take bitcoin.. I'd start using it for all my transactions just for the heck of it... ditch the credit card and potentially save amazon a bit of money in credit card fees.

Most of those $500,000 sales were from people who otherwise would not have bought from TigerDirect. Many people made their purchases to use their Bitcoins.

I think like many others if I come across a store that offers the exact same services as somebody who will only take paper money but takes payment in Bitcoin I'll immediately move to them because there's so much less hassle and intrusiveness whenever you pay with cryptocurrencies.

Agreed. Here both the buyer and the seller is gaining. And the third party intermediary is eliminated.

Are you talking about bitcoin payment processors or credit card processors.  I've never heard of credit card companies offering 0.1% fees, do you have anything to back that up?  That sounds way off if youre talking about cc processors , if thats the case than a lot of merchants would have no need for bitcoin as it would actually be more expensive in a lot of situations :). 

He just had an anal sex to pull that shit straight out of his ass....

0.1% .... pfft i bet that must hurt.

I keep seeing these numbers quoted but not from any real sources.  There is no link to anything from TigerDirect other than the initial press release about adoption.  Furthermore, josic.com seems void of anything reputable and fresh.  I've seen others quote these numbers but nobody seems to have anything actually from TigerDirect.  A quick google news search yields next to nothing corroborating it. Anyone have any other sources?  Maybe something official? 

Or do we have to wait until TigerDirect actually releases their quarterlies?