Bitcoin Forum

I think a lot of potential Bitcoin merchants would be interested in our honest answer.

Credit card unless BTC offers discount.
Credit card offers protection and often rewards (miles etc.) that come at a cost to the merchant (and a tidy profit for card issuer). Merchants should at the very least split the difference and offer a 3% discount for purchases with BTC. Then everybody wins (except Visa etc.)

I don't have a paypal account.

I have bitcoins. Right now that $7 book would be about 36 mB, which I have available in my spending wallet. I believe we are nearing the top of the bitcoin bubble, so I have no problem buying something with bitcoins right now.

Would a 3% discount be enough for you to buy with Bitcoins instead of PayPal or a credit card?

I'm interested because I'm considering adding Bitcoin buttons to an info products website. If I go to the expense of doing that, I want people to use them.

PizzaForCoins.com adds a BTC 0.03 surcharge (currently USD 5.45) to all orders. If BTC holders are willing to pay this kind of premium to use their Bitcoin, why shouldn't I do something similar?

Pizzaforcoins isn't selling pizza; they're selling a service. The surcharge is for their service, not so they can profit off someone's want to use BTC.

Speaking of buying media online - I'd love to renew my spotify subscription with bitcoins. Have they said anything on the matter? Didn't one of the original spotify investors recently invest in bitpay?

Unless paying with BTC has a guarantee of not getting defrauded, I would pay either PP or CC. I would only pay BTC if I have 100% trust on an entity or person.

It's an interesting irony that some people will require a great deal of trust to exist before they'll spend their no-trust currency.

In those cases, BTC is useless as an everyday currency unless payment processors begin to accept it. Central banks and governments can easily stop that from happening.

The additional time and difficulty involved with realizing BTC revenue compared to that of USD through a single payment processor will have many merchants such as myself taking a pass on it for now.

Lacking a strong merchant base, I don't think Bitcoin will ever be any more useful to most people than a virtual tulip would be.

I'm sure there are many people for whom that will be enough, however.

Uhmm you didn't really think that through did you?   

Merchants have LESS up-front risk with bitcoin payments - with Paypal and credit cards you have to worry about
charges getting reversed, and it takes a LONG TIME to get your money. The buyer accepts all of the risk when
he prepays with bitcoin.

I don't see any irony in people being careful with their money.

PayPal since it's easy and secure, and I don't have to give out my VISA number. Bitcoin is an investment I don't want to touch other than for cashing out.

Pay with PayPal: Paypal lock your account and keep all the money in it, they take out random amounts from all linked accounts, then tell you they will maybe think about giving you your money back in 180 days. You never get the book or the money paypal stole.

Pay with Credit Card: You get the book, you pay for the book 1 month later.

Pay with BTC: You pay for the book right now. You will probably get the book but if you don't then you don't have anyone to get your money back.

BTC is great for merchants - not so good for consumers - people are willing to buy things with credit cards because if the company doesn't follow through, they can get their money back. This doesn't currently exist with BTC.  There's no reason BTC denominated credit products (credit cards, etc) couldn't exist.

In fact, there's a real need for such products: not only for consumer protection, but also for subscription style transactions. What consumer wants to prepay a year or more in advance or remember to send bitcoin to keep a subscription current every month?

This is true, a free banking BTC institution is necessary for bitcoin to actually saturate he market in this world.

It depends on the entity I'm buying from, but if there's no negative reviews about the site, I am using my Bitcoins 100% of the time. It's easier for me to spend my coins then to grab my CC/PayPal account anyway.

Buy $7 book using Bitcoin. Then buy $7 worth of Bitcoins. You'll have the same amount of Bitcoins.

And you have wasted >1% in the process and forgone your consumer rights for the privilege.

For crying out loud, it is a $7 purchase. When have you ever been scammed out of such a small amount? If somebody scammed me for $7 i would probably bitch and moan but I might not even go through all the hassle of trying to get the credit card to reverse it.

Why have you wasted >1% in the process? You could probably send the bitcoins without a fee, and if you do it right you can avoid the fee when buying bitcoins (either buy direct from somebody, or utilize the volatility of bitcoins to get better than the average rate).

Currently, I would pay by BTC, because I want to support the seller in his decision to use bitcoins and encourage bitcoin economy. But... I would check the seller (reputability, references) first.

You seem to forget that bitcoin is becoming more ubiquitous as time goes by. Most people are investing in bitcoins now mainly as a safe haven investment knowing that a) it has a value and b) that a limited amount of bitcoins will be minted over time. This "rarity" is what stands out against other fiat currencies as investors have become concerned over what has happened with banks in Cyprus; i.e. your money isn't safe any more with banks and the situation over the Cypriot banks has echoed over other Euro countries. However, the appealing property of bitcoins which is favoured by many is that your money stays in your wallet and no one can steal it (unless you become a victim of a hack attack), i.e. you don't need a bank to invest or safeguard your bitcoins.

An analogy that I see with bitcoins is that I doubt that you, or anyone, would ever pass a large sum of money to a) a stranger and, b) have no guarantee/s of getting it back if the merchant backs out, and, c) have no trust established. This is why there are Certification Authorities (CA's such as Thawte and verisign in PKI infrastructures) to gather trust by verifying people's identities and issuing public and private keys to these entities where trust can be gained. We have this layer of trust when shopping on trusted sites with fiat currencies, but when it comes to exchanging bitcoins, a layer of protection FOR THE BUYER is missing which is what I believe the bitcoin community needs; a semi distributed authority/ies that can mediate disputes/chargebacks between the merchant and consumer, etc.

1. It's cool to pay with Bitcoin

2. It's nerdy to pay with Bitcoin

3. I know the seller will have larger profits and thus - in the longer term - will be able to lower the price once the competition switches to Bitcoin.

Bitcoin: it's inevitable.

You seem to forget that bitcoin is becoming more ubiquitous as time goes by. Most people are investing in bitcoins now mainly as a safe haven investment knowing that a) it has a value and b) that a limited amount of bitcoins will be minted over time. This "rarity" is what stands out against other fiat currencies as investors have become concerned over what has happened with banks in Cyprus; i.e. your money isn't safe any more with banks and the situation over the Cypriot banks has echoed over other Euro countries. However, the appealing property of bitcoins which is favoured by many is that your money stays in your wallet and no one can steal it (unless you become a victim of a hack attack), i.e. you don't need a bank to invest or safeguard your bitcoins.

An analogy that I see with bitcoins is that I doubt that you, or anyone, would ever pass a large sum of money to a) a stranger and, b) have no guarantee/s of getting it back if the merchant backs out, and, c) have no trust established. This is why there are Certification Authorities (CA's such as Thawte and verisign in PKI infrastructures) to gather trust by verifying people's identities and issuing public and private keys to these entities where trust can be gained. We have this layer of trust when shopping on trusted sites with fiat currencies, but when it comes to exchanging bitcoins, a layer of protection FOR THE BUYER is missing which is what I believe the bitcoin community needs; a semi distributed authority/ies that can mediate disputes/chargebacks between the merchant and consumer, etc.

1st Bitcoin. No fees, and because its annonimous.
2nd Paypal.
3rd None. As a rule I don't trust sites which ask for credit card while not accepting paypal (or other payment method).

1) I agree on the anonymous property, although there are transaction fees when sending bitcoins to other wallets.
2) Paypal does add an extra layer of trust when shopping over a credit card.
3) You have 120 days to contact your credit card issuer for a charge back if things go wrong from the date of purchase.

I thought you said you're a merchant? At this point it looks like you're searching for negatives...

Doing a chargeback on a credit card can actually be quite complicated - you need to prove that the merchant didn't follow through.
Generally the credit card company has the option of simply robbing the merchant of their payment based on your word, so that's what they do.

If a merchant is operating on any scale, and wants to continue doing business, they need to build a good REPUTATION. Ripping people
off won't work for very long - it makes no difference what type of payment they accept.

Recurring payments are a bad idea for a number of reasons, although you could probably script such transactions with bitcoin fairly easily.

Pay with bitcoin. And next day you see that the coins you spent have double value. Damn! Wait...the day after it turned out to have only half the value - super! Wait....