Accepting bitcoins in everyday transactions

[NicosKaralis]

Here in my country, Brazil, bitcoins are not very well understand. Especially in the areas not economically developed.
They know about some people that became rich because of bitcoins and want give it a try, but companies that work with bitcoins here are not completely focused on that and i couldn't find a good help about accepting bitcoins in small business.

I know that bitcoins are great for online stores or any asynchronous store (pay now, receive some time later), but what about the stores that need to accept the money and return a product right away?

Lets say a business that have a line of people and the service is immediate, like a food truck or a supermarket.

How does you confirm the transaction? If the transaction have no confirmation it could be double spended and voided, if you wait for confirmation it could take up to 30 minutes for just one confirmation.
Doesn't ignoring confirmation create a potential flaw?

How can i make a receipt of a bitcoin transaction, i saw somewhere in this forum someone saying that tx are not the same as receipts but can't find that topic now, can someone explain?

[Amph]

Here in my country, Brazil, bitcoins are not very well understand. Especially in the areas not economically developed.
They know about some people that became rich because of bitcoins and want give it a try, but companies that work with bitcoins here are not completely focused on that and i couldn't find a good help about accepting bitcoins in small business.

I know that bitcoins are great for online stores or any asynchronous store (pay now, receive some time later), but what about the stores that need to accept the money and return a product right away?

Lets say a business that have a line of people and the service is immediate, like a food truck or a supermarket.

How does you confirm the transaction? If the transaction have no confirmation it could be double spended and voided, if you wait for confirmation it could take up to 30 minutes for just one confirmation.
Doesn't ignoring confirmation create a potential flaw?

How can i make a receipt of a bitcoin transaction, i saw somewhere in this forum someone saying that tx are not the same as receipts but can't find that topic now, can someone explain?

this is true only for small amount, for big amount pending transaction are fine, many merchants are using those type of transaction for speed up their business

for now there is no way to speed up confirmation as it require an hard fork

[RodeoX]

For a food truck there is little reason to wait for confirmation. It would be cost prohibitive to launch a double spend attack to get a sandwich. It's the same as McDonald's accepting a credit card. It would cost to much money to verify your identity for a Big Mac so they just take the risk, knowing that it would not be worth the effort of credit card fraud. 
If you were selling a car it would be worth waiting for some confirmations, but not for a small sale.

[GoingAround]

You could check out for payment processors like bitpay but as RodeoX says, its not worth the work to double spend to get a sandwich.

[jdebunt]

Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure there is at least one Bitcoin payment processor which releases the funds to you at 0 confirmations, as they will take the risk in case of a double-spend.

I'm not sure which one it is though, but I'm sure there is more than one payment processor operating this way?

[NicosKaralis]

Ok, about confirmations and double spend i think the overall opinion is right, there is no point trying to steal a sandwich

But what about a receipt? Is it possible to create a receipt like thingy that we can give to the buyer?

[S4VV4S]

Here in my country, Brazil, bitcoins are not very well understand. Especially in the areas not economically developed.
They know about some people that became rich because of bitcoins and want give it a try, but companies that work with bitcoins here are not completely focused on that and i couldn't find a good help about accepting bitcoins in small business.

I know that bitcoins are great for online stores or any asynchronous store (pay now, receive some time later), but what about the stores that need to accept the money and return a product right away?

Lets say a business that have a line of people and the service is immediate, like a food truck or a supermarket.

How does you confirm the transaction? If the transaction have no confirmation it could be double spended and voided, if you wait for confirmation it could take up to 30 minutes for just one confirmation.
Doesn't ignoring confirmation create a potential flaw?

How can i make a receipt of a bitcoin transaction, i saw somewhere in this forum someone saying that tx are not the same as receipts but can't find that topic now, can someone explain?

A Brazillian with a Greek name?
Apart from that,
if you are worried about double spends then ask for payments from coinbase and blockchain.info customers.
I think coinbase is safer though I have never used it before.

But to be honest with you, a sandwich truck should ONLY accept cash 

Also, I believe that with new tech coming out there will be no worries regarding confirmation times.
E-wallets will take care of that - much like Paypal but for bitcoin.

[jdebunt]

Ok, about confirmations and double spend i think the overall opinion is right, there is no point trying to steal a sandwich

But what about a receipt? Is it possible to create a receipt like thingy that we can give to the buyer?

Coinkite terminals create receipts, I know that much.

In fact, Bitpay can send you receipts as well once the transaction has been confirmed (which is sent to the customer, so I assume it's a setting)

I think Coinbase does the same but I'd need to double-check that.

[NicosKaralis]

A Brazillian with a Greek name?

My father is greek, didn't understand your surprise... People move to a new country all the time.

Apart from that,
if you are worried about double spends then ask for payments from coinbase and blockchain.info customers.
I think coinbase is safer though I have never used it before.

But to be honest with you, a sandwich truck should ONLY accept cash 

Also, I believe that with new tech coming out there will be no worries regarding confirmation times.
E-wallets will take care of that - much like Paypal but for bitcoin.

The example of a food truck was not very nice, but some food truck do offer credit card payment so i don't think bitcoins are so off the curve.

About only accepting blockchain or coinbase
Can't do that, i can't say "we accept bitcoins, but just from here, not from your personal wallet"
The whole idea is to give people the option to pay in any way they want, cash, credit card, bitcoins... And to offer that same payment options to anyone interested.

Here people think that only high volume transactions can be made with bitcoins, like buying a car or a house. If i could make them understand that there is much more to it... There is a whole new market here

[Sundark]

If you want to know more about how bitcoin is protected against double-spending. I suggest you visit this page: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=79090.msg881283#msg881283
Also you may be interested in this topic: Best practice for fast transaction acceptance - how high is the risk?  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3441.msg48384#msg48384

[jonnybravo0311]

A Brazillian with a Greek name?

My father is greek, didn't understand your surprise... People move to a new country all the time.

Apart from that,
if you are worried about double spends then ask for payments from coinbase and blockchain.info customers.
I think coinbase is safer though I have never used it before.

But to be honest with you, a sandwich truck should ONLY accept cash 

Also, I believe that with new tech coming out there will be no worries regarding confirmation times.
E-wallets will take care of that - much like Paypal but for bitcoin.

The example of a food truck was not very nice, but some food truck do offer credit card payment so i don't think bitcoins are so off the curve.

About only accepting blockchain or coinbase
Can't do that, i can't say "we accept bitcoins, but just from here, not from your personal wallet"
The whole idea is to give people the option to pay in any way they want, cash, credit card, bitcoins... And to offer that same payment options to anyone interested.

Here people think that only high volume transactions can be made with bitcoins, like buying a car or a house. If i could make them understand that there is much more to it... There is a whole new market here

You can certainly accept BTC.  For a manual process, as the merchant you'd just fire up your wallet of choice on your phone and generate a QR code for the amount the customer owes you.  Customer scans that with his wallet of choice and sends you the coins.  It's up to you as the merchant to manage how willing you are to accept the risk of 0 confirmation transactions.

For receipts, unlike cash, you've got a record of the transaction.  if you're going all digital, why bother with a piece of paper at all?  The customer can certainly verify the transaction on the blockchain.

Now, if you wanted to get a bit fancy, you could have a tie-in to your POS terminal that would first generate the request and QR code based on the sale amount, and then once the customer sends the coins, you could have the notification sent to a printer to provide the receipt to the customer.

[Cryptowatch.com]

At this stage, bitcoin is still nerdy, and has not the same marketshare as paypal, but things are improving every day.

If your business is not big, and you are operating a brick and mortar store, you could simply make one address along with the associated QR-code and print it, then hang it on the counter of the shop.

In the store you could keep a watch only wallet, so once you see tx with 0 conf, you ok's the sale. The wallet with your private keys should be backed up and also existing in a safe location, your house or similar.

Pros:

- Relatively easy setup.
- Relatively good security.

Cons:

- Anybody can see all transactions your business does if they know the address you use.

Slightly more advanced is to generate a new address and QR-code for every sale done, this is recommended and better. I am sure there are some software/scripts out there that could do this for free, that you could run on your own hardware.

Probably the simplest way would be to use a 3rd-party, but then of course you take on 3rd-party risk (privacy risk and monetary risk). This might or might not be acceptable for you.

Do your research and educate yourself, make sure that you know how to backup your private keys. There are different wallets for different purposes, and bitcoin core might not be the best choice for you.

And surely it would be possible to have a system that prints a receipt for every purchase. Perhaps some readymade script already have this functionality.

There are also other things to take into account. What kind of business will you run, is it a good fit for accepting bitcoins? How will the customers get bitcoins in the first place, and why should they use that over normal cash when buying from you? Perhaps you'd give a rebate for bitcoin customers? Also, the service or goods you are selling, do you need to pay your distributors? Do they accept bitcoin, if not you need to convert btc to fiat to pay off your distributors.

If only a small percentage of your customers are likely to use bitcoins, then perhaps going with a 3rd-party solution is not a bad idea, as the monetary 3rd-party risk to your business is then very small. This would also require less work on your side. It might hoever not be a proper implementation philosophically speaking as you're not contributing as much to the bitcoin ecosystem as you'd do if you kept btc you receive directly and used these to purchase from other bitcoin businesses.