I'm planning of asking a shop in my region about accepting bitcoins. They have both an online shop and a bricks&mortar selling location, and they would be the first to accept bitcoins in the wider area. Furthermore, I believe they could be a perfect fit because the shop owner is almost famous for his creative, experimental and unconventional ideas (which are also the reason for his success), so that I can well imagine the idea of bitcoin appeals to him not only if he thinks it would make more profit, but simply because of itself (not needing any middle man for transactions, for instance).
Even more, the business is getting its raw materials (fair trade cocoa beans) directly from suppliers / farmers all around the world (for instance india or south america), with the founder visiting local communities and fair-trade sponsored social initiatives himself from time to time. So
possibly some time in the future (when supporting infrastructure like exchanges have grown in those countries) it could even be an interesting option to buy supplies (partly) with bitcoin. This would even solve the "problem" of getting bitcoins to argentine, which has been discussed here already a bit, and could further help locals.
So all in all, as mentioned already, I believe this particular business is really
perfectly suited for bitcoin adoption - maybe I'm biased, but at least I can't think of one in my area which would fit better. I plan to write them a mail, asking whether they already know about bitcoins and highlighting some of the key properties and why I think it could be interesting to them. If there's really interest and they take the time for it, I would also be delighted to personally visit them and give a short introduction or so. I'd like to get some suggestions about what exactly I should point out in my message:
- Of course, for a shop bitcoins offer the possibility to accept payments rather easily (with a printed QR code + computer, or a tablet running one of the mobile wallets), (mostly) without fees. However, where I live credit cards are not that common (more ATM cards), so I doubt that there's really the potential to save 3%+ of fees on most purchases. Also, the local currency are Euros - is there a similar service to bitpay available, in case the merchant prefers to avoid the exchange rate risk?
- As mentioned, I can imagine the business owner could be interested also in bitcoins ideals (somewhat). So I suppose it would be a good idea to point out the key features quickly (no middle man / no central authority, basically "freedom of monetary transactions").
- It would be at least an initial and also PR boost to be the first place in the wider area where one can actually spend bitcoins in person, and possibly the first to accept bitcoins of its business sector in a rather wide range (Austria / Europe? / world-wide? when the sector is defined accordingly), which would probably be an additional incentive.
- Do you think it would make sense to also mention the possibility described above of paying world-wide supplier communities directly with bitcoins? I can see this as interesting option in the future, but certainly not yet. But if the business owner is far-sighted (which he is, IMHO) I can imagine this could also interest him as possible vision for the future.
What do you think would be the best things to inform them about? I'm really excited about this, to be honest, since I would also personally
love to spend my coins there.
