Bitcoin Forum

If I owned a restaurant, I'd add a QR code on the bill. It would be an optional feature.

The implementation wouldn't be too difficult. A programmer could make this in one day.
Waiters could be taught how to deal with it in one hour.
Risk of cheating would be so low that zero confirmations would be needed (status pending sufficient).
What would be printed on the bill would be something like this:

Optional:
Pay with BITCOIN.
$21.12 USD   = BTC0.04189 XBT
[QR Code]
Scan and pay with your smartphone.
Ask waiter for further instructions.

What about the fluctuating exchange rate?

Very interesting idea, but payment for a meal in a restaurant with receiving a check isn't a big problem and it doesn't take long to write a payment check as you do it with computer. But of course Bitcoin payments would make it slightly faster and more comfortable for some people. Of course there must be a choice to choose to pay with FIAT money receiving a check or with bitcoins through app. Maybe we'll have it one day.

The POS software would need a small module or code library to connect via API to an exchange rate data feed... Or, even simpler, the value could be set maybe once a day and the software just multiplies or divides.

Why not just use a payment processor or a tablet with your QR code on etc?

Zetler,
Interesting but I have few questions.
Where are you from? I can guess you are not from US,
there are a lot of restaurants in the United States which areaccepting Bitcoin since a long time
not only in the restaurants there are a lot other business which are accepting Bitcoin in this time.

coinkite (https://coinkite.com/rs/n83af7dv) has this feature. You can use coinkite terminal with bitcoin and litecoin debit cards, but also with regular bitcoin and litecoin.

You can ask them if they want to pay with bitcoin, and if they do, give them a tablet using coinbase/bitpay to calculate the exchange rate, and then you will receive it in fiat.

I agree 100% and have designed a similar approach. It must be done within the existing POS systems to be successful.

The coinkite approach won't work long term, and here's why...
http://blog.atlantabitcoin.com/bitcoin-at-the-point-of-sale-wont-find-success-until-its-integrated/ (http://blog.atlantabitcoin.com/bitcoin-at-the-point-of-sale-wont-find-success-until-its-integrated/)

By the way buying food with bitcoins becomes more and more popular

It can be very useful for your business. Just put a smartphone with bitpay and let them pay using qr code

There is not much to implement.

If you run a restaurant and want to accept Bitcoin you can basically start doing so the second you choose to do so.

Why would you need a programmer? To install a Bitcoin Wallet on an Android tablett? To call up the blockexplorer of blockchain.info with which you can create payment requests to any address whatsoever?

Starting to accept Bitcoin anywhere takes less effort and time than I needed to write this post really.

Joe

If I owned a restaurant,

The customer would pay when they order. It will get a confirmation by the time food is ready.

Then they can leave a tip at the end of the meal.

You don't need confimations for accepting Bitcoin for food and drink.

In over three years now we had a few thousand Bitcoin payments which were all accepted once broadcasted to the net with zero confirmations and we did not have one single double spend.

I know this might change but so far don't worry about confirmations in this kind of business. Someone wanting to cheat in a restaurant is much more likely to just leave without asking for the bill than to actually try to double spend Bitcoins.

Joe

 

Of course you need confirmations, recently we have seen demonstrated over and over how easy it is to doublespend.

A basic problem with zero confirmations is that there is always a risk that the transaction may never be confirmed. It can happen when the payer does not include a transaction fee, though it is rare.

Of course in the case of a restaurant, anyone that wants to skip out on the bill will simply walk out rather than go to all the effort to attempt to reverse a zero confirmation transaction.

If the patron has gone to the effort to actually send a transaction for a restaurant bill, it should be safe enough to accept it with 0 confirmations.

I don't think double spends are a big a problem as people think they are. If a payment processor is used they'd be covered anyway.

[/quote]

That would be kinda cool. It'd be great to tip the waiters in Bitcoins as well.

You can automate everything if you want, once an address/qr code is created it is associated with the table number, time and expected to receive a specific amount of BTC. If it is paid by the customer the system instantly detects and mark it as paid, and it is removed from the system when that table is paid with another payment method.

It's really cool that it can be implemented so easily.

When BTC is optional I see no reason not to do so for restaurants. Also cafeterias, bars, even super markets should do it.

Or, well, the only reason not to my be legal / accounting.

Please reread my post considering the fact that I am reporting from real life. Running a bar that may very well have taken more bitcoin payments than any other bar on the planet I believe that my experience allows me to not listen to what you tell me what I need, especially because I believe that you have as much of that experience as I need confirmations when people pay their beer and that is presicely zero.

By the way what you are refering to is no news. everybody who had understood the protocol and gained some understanding of this economy had understood that years ago already.

Joe

Something like a smarphone with coinbase app will get you lot of clients :)

Are they talking about either of these?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=574774.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=152348.0

This would be good and no confirmation should not be problem anymore.

I had something at Ada' Technical books in Seattle last week. They had BitPay integrated into their POS register. Very easy, just select a tip then pay the QR code. Here in Madison I like an Indonesian place called Bandung. There you can just scan the tattered QR code taped to the counter.  It could not get easier than that, but you'll have to remember to add a tip. 

http://seattletechnicalbooks.com/

https://bandungrestaurant.com/

So how do u handle 0 confirmation tx's

You feel comfortable in accepting that the transaction will eventually get more confirmations because the hassle that the diner would have to go through to in order to send another transaction that cancels out the first exceeds the hassle of expecting the diner to wait for confirmations.

As already pointed out, take bitcoin out of the equation and still any diner who wants to skip out on the bill can quite easily run away without paying.

This is a good solution for a very practical problem.  As you are aware, making it easy for ordinary restaurants to accept bitcoin would significantly increase the use of bitcoin in everyday life.  :)

Good ideas here.

You can start by giving me your menu with prices listed in BTC.

I'm not going to go through the trouble of paying with BTC only for you to receive fiat from some third party.

And no, I'll not send the payment from your device so don't even try it...

There's an easy solution for handling confirmation times.

You make them pay after they order.
By the time their food is ready, there'll already be 1 confirmation and 2 or 3 when they leave.
If something happen you can just ask them to pay again, and their wallet will also show that the transaction failed if things do happen.

The places I have eaten never wait for confirmation. It does require some trust on their part, but so does a check or even a cash. The cash may be found to be counterfeit later on. It is worth trusting in these cases because faking it would be a bigger hassle than just paying the bill.

I have been involved i a project, a long time ago, where they wanted to have digital menu cards on Tablet Computers.
As i said, a long time ago, where the market wasn't ready for stuff like this.
The Tablets too expensive, too heavy and bulky and so on...

Now with an ordinary, slim 7" 99$ WiFi connected Android-Tablet you could display your Menucard like a "local" Website,
with realtime BTC prices. And for example, if every unit is adressed to a Tablenumber, also show the bill including the option to pay with BTC as it shows a QR.

There is no point in pricing your goods and services in XBT as people want to be able to compare the prices in EUR / USD and also you are required by law to have your pricing in the legal tender of the jurisdiction you are in.

You can type the EUR / USD price into about every wallet and have real time price conversion.

What do you mean with "trouble of paying with BTC"?

If you had ever made a Bitcoin payment you would know that there is no trouble. It is simply scanning a QR and then clicking "send".

Joe

I pretty much assume, he meant additional to the local currency price.
Which is, like i said, something like you should do in a digital way except printing new card daily/weekly ...whatever.

No, that is a bad solution for something which is no problem.

At least where I live it is absolutely unusual for people to have to pay before they eat and then pay every single drink being brought to that table afterwards. That is not only absolutely un-oractical it also makes the customer very unwelcome.

I repeat: nothing is as easy as accepting Bitcoin in a restaurant. Everybody who has some device with an internet connection can literally start doing so the very second they decide to.

Want to convince some restaurant or bar owner to accept Bitcoin for your bill?

Ask the to call up www.easywallet.org in their webbrowser.
Scan the code.
Send the money.
While you start explaining the page to them briefly the money turns up in front of their eyes.

Experiencing that ease of use and speed will convince most people to look into Bitcoin a bit deeper.

Joe

Thanks, I was a little iffy about the confirmations. Basically.. if you required even 1 confirmation you need to wait 10 minutes right? If you require 0 confirmations, the merchant gets his money instantly, right? But what is the risk? Can someone send a "fake" bitcoin and get away with it?

There are some restaurants around the world that accepts Bitcoins already, especially in South Korea  :)

The average time between confirmations is 10 minutes. Sometimes they can happen in less than a second, or they can take over an hour.


It's not the sender that decides how many confirmations are required, the merchant decides how many confirmations they want to wait for.  The transaction will typically show up in the merchants wallet in less than 5 seconds (often less than a second). At that time it will have 0 confirmations.


The risk is that someone can write a special wallet program that can send two transactions that spend the exact same bitcoins.  One transaction would be paying the merchant (which the merchant would see), and the other would send the bitcoins to a different address that you own (the merchant probably won't even see that transaction until it is confirmed). Only one of those transactions will become confirmed and added to the blockchain.  Once one of the transactions is confirmed, the other transaction will become invalid and all peers will discard it.  This is not an easy or reliable process, and it is obviously fraud (just like writing a bad check, or falsely claiming fraud on a credit card transaction).  It would be faster, easier, and more reliable for the customer to simply get up and walk out of the restaurant without paying than it is to try and successfully pull off this 0 confirmation fraud.

I see, thanks!

Yes, I am sure were will see a low percentage of fraud here.

I

Latin House Grill in Miami (Kendall) does this.  No BitPay needed.

1)  Open up Blockchain app
2)  Type in the Bitcoin amount and the app tells you exactly how much USD it equals while you type.
3)  Fine tune it until correct
4)  Submit.

No merchant fees for Latin House Grill (even low ones via BitPay).
Fortunately for them, Bitcoin went up significantly since I paid $52 for our dinner.
I have now paid them $70 for dinner :-P
Fortunately I replenished *my* bitcoin immediately.

-B-

The risk with 0 is no more than the risk of charge backs and traditional fraud. There will always be a percentage of the population that seeks to defraud and steal. Bit coin is not immune to this. 

Use BitPay. They will help. They have retailer solutions

Buy a coinkite terminal.  Works well.  Great support team.  Looks like other EFTPOS (Credit card) hardware, so staff dont require much training.  Auto forwarding at the back end too.

Quickbooks will be adding bit coin to its POS systems soon as well.

It's not as simple as that to doublespend. If you send two transactions simultaneously the network will see it, I believe. You'd have to give the real transaction a head start so the network does not have enough time to mark the transaction as a double spent, yet on the same time you should not wait too long, or else the fraudulent transaction will not be able to beat the original transaction. For this reason doublespend attempts often fail.