Bitcoin Forum

Need volunteers to get big chain Grocery stores in America to accept bitcoin

These are the 3 primary things that Bitcoin need to survive in the modern day.
Food, Water, and Shelter.

Bitcoin will need volunteers to infiltrate these 3 big important companies if it wants to have a chance to become a currency.


---------------
Need volunteers to do the following:

- Get gift card companies to accept bitcoins.
- Get egifter.com and gyft.com to sell gift cards to big chain grocery stores all over America.

Yes, there are more and more stores have accepted bitcoin.

It would be better to target the companies which make their PoS and self check out systems. If those systems dont support it, then the grocery store will likely never accept it due to the overhead of manually processing a transaction. This also has the upside of having other retailers which use those PoS systems, being able to accept bitcoin.

This is a good idea, to think of getting grocery stores to accept bitcoin. Food, Water and shelter are things that we need for survival. If dish network can accept them, I am sure grocery stores could... Just hope it would happen in the UK too. Since over here, ASDA is part of the Walmart family, and if they were to accept it (even though they're a superstore), then bit coin would get even bigger than what it currently is!

Buying milk and eggs with bit coin would be great. I think regional and local stores might be the best target for this idea. The larger companies move very slowly and there is a natural barrier to actually getting to speak with people that can make decisions like this. 

I agree, the infrastructure needs to exist first to allow retailers and grocers to quickly and seamlessly transact with Bitcoin. And the best place to get that done is through the Point of Sale systems used.

As it stands now, it's only "convenient" for smaller businesses because the amount of overhaul that has to be done is fairly minimal when compared to all the Logistics of rolling it out in retail.

im pretty sure that within the current population of bitcoiners, there are atleast a couple that work for the walmart group of stores. so if there are any walmart employee's or in the same plee, any employee's of other grocery/superstores. please raise your hands (reply to acknowledgement) then we can seek you to pester your boss, or get you to request your colleagues within the company to pass messages to your superiors.

you can even tell them that their is no need to swap all bitcoin for FIAT as you would happily receive your paycheck as pure bitcoin.

inform your superiors that you can be in direct contact with bitpay/coinbase and you can help set them up with those API's and services to integrate with the system

Asking for payment in BTC is fine and dandy, but it doesn’t push the issue of having the company accept payment for goods in BTC. The way I see it, the best way to enact that is by enabling their transactional systems to interact with the Bitcoin protocol. If we really want change, they need to have an automated system that allows this type of transactional sequence (and in order to truly push it, it needs some sort of micropayment protection). I feel that a company that develops this type of infrastructure can allow this to happen. And the best way of doing that is by creating a Point of Sale machine that has Bitcoin integrated.

I would absolutely love for Trader Joe's to start accepting BTC.

... i understand your theory. but this topic is about getting volunteers..
in the past i have seen MANY flashmob attempts at asking merchants to accept bitcoin. the first step to get it to actually happen is for insiders to want it. thus having employee's talking about it and pushing info to their superiors is step one. then if the employee's know about the bitcoin API of coinbase and bitpay, and can help the company integrate it or atleast explain it to the company's tech department, is easier and more potential of results than simply flashmobbing the store.

don't forget coinkite (https://coinkite.com/rs/rbqcdwy2), they have a POS. That makes them even better than BitPay and coinbase.

I like that theory. Pay employees with bit coins if they are acceptable with it. I think block chain said they do this

Most of these companies, will not accept a payment method, that is unregulated at the moment.

They need protection, like we all do. {What I mean with this, if someone steal your money, there should be laws, covering the consumer and the retailer}

If digital currency are not defined in laws and/or regulations, it's a possible loopholes, for criminals, to go free, when they run with your money.

There are currently discussions on this, in the USA {New York} and the UK. So hopefully we will, see lots of retailers, enter the crypto currency world, when these regulations are in place.

I agree with the OP we need crypto currency in Big chain stores, to increase the adoption rate, and the transaction income. 

I thought, Bitcoin was declared as a commodity in the USA and stealing a commodity is a crime.

Blockchain’s Nicolas Cary Receives His Salary 100% in Bitcoin
http://cryptocrimson.com/2014/06/blockchains-nicolas-cary-receives-salary-100-bitcoin/

Yes please, Trader Joe's would be a huge score for Bitcoin users.
I wonder if any chains like that have a custom POS system that can be "easily" modified for BTC?

Pick a number of major chains you desire to target.  Get volunteers trained up to diplomatically make a pitch to them for end to end services.  Allow for testing equipment free of charge for 30 days.  Validate results and use as an element of reasoning to make the full commitment. Or strong arm them like you're DHS or something...lol

I hope to see at least 4 to 5 crypto companies and two or three major pro-Crypto speakers in Vegas on July 8 through 11, 2015:

http://www.nationalgrocers.org/the-nga-show/the-nga-show---home/


Know this: grocery stores live on small percentages. They would welcome a system that gave them a couple years of no transaction fees, or even 1%.

Also, for anyone that lives in Chicago:
http://www.iga.com/contactIGA.aspx

Yes, it would have to be an organized out reach and we would have to demonstrate that there are enough bit coin holders in an area to make it worth the expense of setting up. 

The one to target first would be a chain that accepts gift cards, even better a gift card that can be scanned from your cell phone.

That way the first step can be made showing that people are willing to pay bitcoins at their store.

Exactly. Demonstrate that there is a demand and they will endeavor to fill it.

Whilst it would be great to see Bitcoin usable in more contexts I think people should not forget that if huge chain stores actually did decide to accept Bitcoin then the next problem would be that it could very well *bring the Bitcoin network to its knees*.

Bitcoin can only handle 7 TPS (at the most) currently whereas other payment networks handle over 1000 TPS.

I previously worked in the payment processing industry with many years focused on grocery. I can say without a doubt that grocery stores will not do anything that will slow down their checkout lanes. That means that bitcoin payments must be integrated into their POS (read my blog about it) (http://blog.atlantabitcoin.com/bitcoin-at-the-point-of-sale-wont-find-success-until-its-integrated/) and be almost transparent to the cashier. Target is in theory a good target (8)) for calls of Bitcoin support but I think they are be too big of a company to sway. Either they will decide to do it, or they will decide not to. Maybe the burn of the recent hack is enough.

There are TONS of small to medium independent chains of grocery stores all around the country. Those are more likely to try something new, but again, only if it's integrated into the POS they use today. These small to medium companies use NCR, Retalix, fujitsu, and a number of other POS systems. Support could be added to these without introducing new hardware by printing a unique QR code on the receipt and development to make the system aware of when the transaction hits the block chain.

The thing is, grocery stores are the most vocal about payments issues. They're sensitive to long authorization times or system outages because their customers are sensitive to them. I suspect it's because they spent all this time packing the cart with groceries and there is usually always a line of people at the check out lane.  If the authorization isn't going through as fast as they expect, embarrassment and primal instincts begin to kick in and it's like backing a wild animal into a corner :o And that is just the regular customers. When you start dealing with the EBT card holders, kick that reaction up a notch or three. Ok I'm exaggerating some but they will absolutely lose customers over outages.

Anyway, my point is that customers are used to getting authorizations in under 3 seconds and many of these store chains have dedicated network connections to their payments processor to ensure it. How many times have you sent a bitcoin transaction and had it take 10 seconds to show up on the network? Not a confirmation, just unconfirmed. That shit would not fly in the grocery business. No matter how much they save, they will not start using a technology that is inconsistent in what would amount to "approval" times. The reason is that payments issues piss the customers off so much that they will walk out, leave the groceries in the cart, and never come back.

There are nuances to the payments industry that many don't understand and this is one of them. Bitcoin just isn't ready for grocery.

In my opinion the most likely adoption path will be...
Ecommerce
micro-merchants (square)
Food and Beverage
Brick and Mortar Retail
Petroleum
Grocery

Absolutely. Grocery stores to insane amounts of payment volume. They also enjoy the lowest payment processing fees due to that volume.

I like the sound of this idea - are you suggesting something like a 'bitcoin giftcard', meaning a one-time use address loaded on a card or phone app with a QR code to scan?  How does this differ from me scanning my regular use wallet QR code?

You can already shop at Target using bitcoins.

http://www.gyft.com/buy-gift-card/target-giftcard/

This can be done in every grocery store.

The question is...do you want a grocery store to accept bitcoin so you can spend your bitcoins at the store...or do you just want a grocery store to accept bitcoin so the price will go up on your "investment"?

Walmart is the retailer you want to accept Bitcoin.

We need to push Walmart to start accepting Gyft again.

For me it is a combination of the two. I would be willing to pay the fees to convert my fiat to bit coin before shopping. If I could use it for every day stuff and bills I would convert my entire paycheck each time. 

That would be good too but I'd like them to just take Bitcoin directly. I wouldn't buy anything there with Bitcoin because all their products are Chinese shit but can you imagine how much our investment would appreciate overnight!

I buy a few things there. Oil changes and tires along with household stuff like garbage bags and soap etc.

Gyft is off topic. My comments and the topic of this thread are about actual Bitcoin acceptance. Gyft is a prepaid card that happens to be funded by among other things, bitcoin.

It would probably make sense to target (no pun intended) the companies' online sales segments first. And I'm sure bitpay and others are already talking with them about it.

I have always been in the mindset of hoarders, but often I need cigarette money hehe. so I would def use bitcoins to buy smokes!
we just need 7/11 to accept them.

Sorry. Some of us want to be able to live mainly on Bitcoin. Gyft helps a lot with that. When they convert to government money is of little concern to me, that's their own funeral.

I think grocery stores will likely be one of the last industries to accept bitcoin.

They are simply too low margin of a business to be taking on these types of risks.

Checkout clerks are low wage employees and may not be able to spot a scam when someone says they sent the coins but didn't. Nor would they be able to spot similar/other scams.

They would need to accept 0/unconfirmed transactions as the line must move relatively quickly and waiting even 10 minutes for 1 confirmation would be an enormous cost. This opens them up to potential double spending attacks. The low margins on their products makes this matter more then a retailer that makes a 20 or a 30 percent margin on their goods.

Unless grocery stores accept BTC for reloadable store gift cards like Starbucks'. Load in advance of checkout at a kiosk.

Developers must develop a magnetic strip card reader/writer to function with their cryptocurrency.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=767779