Bitcoin Forum

hi guys i have a question i am a regular shopper of https://shopse.pk , https://daraz.pk and many more but i was curious that why pakistani ecommerce websites are not taking money i bitcoin . why ?

I mean, you can contact them and ask them yourself if you're really that curious? But in general, ecommerce websites refuse to accept bitcoin payments due to the sole reason that they don't want to deal with the volatility(even though we have services like BitPay).

+ the fact that it's probably too much of a hassle to set up, do maintenance and cybersecurity on when you look at how many people actually use bitcoin as their payment method on the web shop itself. (Which usually is a fraction of the userbase. (.x%))

They would always look up for those factors and also they might integrate it if they would saw some demand but if its too low then they do normally ignore these things.

Another factor that businesses concerns themselves with about the adoption of bitcoin and other crypto is the position of the law in their respective countries. In my country for instance we have several e-commerce sites and fintech companies doing their businesses and being run by millennials and won't mind breaking the status quo but the moment the issue of legality and runnings with agents of government is brought to the table, everybody backtracks which is likely similar to what is happening in Pakistan.

Situation with e-shops is pretty much the same all around the world, not only in Pakistan. Number of online shops that accept Bitcoin is still tiny.
There is several reasons why. First and main reason - business just don't see enough demand to accept Bitcoin. They see that number of people who would use Bitcoin as payment method is very small and in their opinion it's not worth. Another thing, they don't know about Bitcoin much, they think that integrating Bitcoin payments may be difficult, they also afraid price volatility. But actually, integrating Bitcoin payments is so easy with services like Bitpay, you just need to upload their plugin to your store. And price volatility doesn't matters, because after you get Bitcoin payment for goods, payment is instantly converted into fiat currency.
And last thing. Bitcoin is banned in Pakistan, so, owners of online shops must follow laws of their country.

Its not all about the demands, its all about the price instability, for sure, they will not risk accepting BTC, which they will see that it could bring their profit to fall, ofc profit as well. Not unless if they truly understand the tech and they do it as investments. But for this smaller merchants? Nope, not for this time.

I don't think the main reason why it isn't adopted is due to these reasons. Volatility isn't a large issue when services like Bitpay and other cashout services exist. With a quick google search, I found this article on Pakistan's situation on bitcoin.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/cryptos-struggle-with-mass-adoption-in-pakistan

I found out from this article, that the use of BTC is actually banned in Pakistan, although I don't think crypto would be very big in Pakistan with the following quote from the article.


This is still pretty disappointing from the Pakistanian government though, because the article does mention several entrepreneurs in Pakistan showing a lot of interest in blockchain technology.

True. Unless they use another crypto payment processor (which means another cut of profits gone), they will likely need to deal with a lot of issues like double spending, security, refunds in BTC, etc.

Even without checking this article, the legal reasons, as well as the difficulty of making bank transfers in local currency make any store does not accept these currencies.

The primary goal of a store is to make a profit and as long as a website design will facilitate these profits. As long as the achievement of profits is not achieved by digital currencies will not accept.

As answered above, simple reason being, Bitcoin is illegal for use in commercial txs in PK.

But I should point out that I don't even ever recall BTC as accepted by any business during my time there (2.5 years), so this was not a case of "No Bitcoin merchants because it's illegal", simply the case of low adoption.

Bitcoin was mined and traded as early as 2013, my own second-hand knowledge though from locals there, but it corroborates with a lot of stories. Localbitcoins still has plenty of people there buying and selling in PKR, so it's just a typical case that Bitcoin is seen by Pakistanis as a speculative asset, or a medium of storing value... just simply not as a currency for commerce.