Unconventional Bitcoin Wallets

[Aayush]

Trying to introduce a lot of people to Bitcoins by making them pay through bitcoins.
Basic idea being taking cash giving them bitcoins and sending them to setup stalls accepting bitcoins.

The problem I face is that not everybody carries smartphones, and even through smartphones getting them to setup payment is time consuming and complex.
Any ideas how to simplify this and tackle these problems?

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[Argwai96]

if you have more then 10 people you could contact any big payment processor to help you out setup their wallet with more support.

[gogxmagog]

I am unclear as to the logistics of what you propose OP
It sounds to me like you are setting up a temporary market, somewhat akin to a charity sale in a church basement; one night only, local vendors who rent tables, that sort of thing.
There are many problems with this. If the only idea is to learn/use BTC I don't think that alone is enough incentive to draw consumers. If it is to sell goods, that's great but why would anyone want to go through the extra bother of converting fiat just for that?

It would be simple to set up your market and have the patrons go through a barrier where they get debriefed and set up with BTC- if they don't have smartphones they can easily use paper wallets... Then they are free to shop at your jumble sale using BTC... Simple as that.

The problems I see are this;
1. You will need to have many roaming agents "embassadors" if you will, walking about the market, ready to problem solve if and when difficulties and mistakes happen.
2. You would need to hope and pray that the value of BTC does not crash over the allotted time of your market. If shoppers buy BTC then see they actually have less buying power at the end, you just lost new users.
3. What is the incentive? Why should I convert between fiat and BTC, go through the risks and hassles? BTC is struggling to find it's real world best use scenario. We either need to identify and exploit that or simply make BTC purchases more desirable I.e. Deep discounts...

Maybe I'm not fully understanding your idea OP, but I think you have bigger problems to solve than how to include users w/out smartphones

[bitllionaire]

Well, you are somewhat right,
There are some new phisycal wallets that are still expensive, but I think now the biggest point it to get the online expasion of bitcoin

As more people know bitcoin,we will see many new and cheap wallets and apps to make payments with bitcoin easy

[franky1]

trying to get people to have bitcoins and spend them at a street market is a headache to achieve especially in one afternoon..

the best thing you can do is brand it as a "keep your money local".
many towns across the UK and in other countries hate the idea that all of their salary ends up in some foreign corporate bank. many people who love shopping locally want to know that funds stay in their community.

so if you brand it that way, that funds dont end up in some swiss  branch of HSBC, but instead are pretty much locked to the phone in their pocket which no bank can syphon off.. then you have a better proposition to get people to try it.

[oblivi]

If you want to pay in real life you better have a smartphone, otherwise forget it. The only alternative would be carrying a paperwallet with you, quite annoying. And finally, hardware wallets, but I doubt your friends are going to be willing to spend money on those.

[jeannemadrigal2]

More people get smart phones every day.  I applaud your efforts, and it is people like you who will push the technology forward and make innovations so more can use them.  

HW wallets are the future, along with smart phones.  Everything is such first generation right now, but the real winning wallet hardware will be the one that lets you connect all of your accounts, fiat, altcoins, paypay, etc, in to one device.  This will be a thing the avergage consumer might use, and will draw more people in to using and accepting bitcoins.

[Aayush]

I am unclear as to the logistics of what you propose OP
It sounds to me like you are setting up a temporary market, somewhat akin to a charity sale in a church basement; one night only, local vendors who rent tables, that sort of thing.
There are many problems with this. If the only idea is to learn/use BTC I don't think that alone is enough incentive to draw consumers. If it is to sell goods, that's great but why would anyone want to go through the extra bother of converting fiat just for that?

It would be simple to set up your market and have the patrons go through a barrier where they get debriefed and set up with BTC- if they don't have smartphones they can easily use paper wallets... Then they are free to shop at your jumble sale using BTC... Simple as that.

The problems I see are this;
1. You will need to have many roaming agents "embassadors" if you will, walking about the market, ready to problem solve if and when difficulties and mistakes happen.
2. You would need to hope and pray that the value of BTC does not crash over the allotted time of your market. If shoppers buy BTC then see they actually have less buying power at the end, you just lost new users.
3. What is the incentive? Why should I convert between fiat and BTC, go through the risks and hassles? BTC is struggling to find it's real world best use scenario. We either need to identify and exploit that or simply make BTC purchases more desirable I.e. Deep discounts...

Maybe I'm not fully understanding your idea OP, but I think you have bigger problems to solve than how to include users w/out smartphones

There is a local event with about 50 shops for 3 hours in the evening, I am convincing these shops to accept bitcoins, and the customers can get a small discount if they purchase in btc.
The problem with paper wallet is spending the,. how will they spend on different items?
Yes we can have volunteers roam about

[funkenstein]

Not sure if this is what you are asking but paper wallets aka bitcoin cheques work great.

Make a few dozen and put 0.1 or 0.02 in them or whatever you need.  When it comes to paying, just hand it over.  

If you like, you can keep a copy of the key and tell the storekeeper they have 1 month or something to transfer it after which you will yank it back.  

Or don't even bother to keep a copy.  It depends on the amount and what you want to do.  

The storekeeper keeps it with a receipt / record like any sale by any other "cheque".  One can even write name / license number / address / whatever on the back of the paper wallet.  
If there are later problems, the storekeeper can find you and you can figure it out.    

To spend / cash the cheque of course the shopkeeper need only get online, import the key, and send to own stash / wherever.  

Of course for the case where you are serving dozens of anonymous mountain climbers in your mountain hut outside of internet range this procedure will still have some problems.  People will hand you random strings of digits and claim they hold coin, then they will disappear never to be seen again.  One possible solution is a relatively recent copy of block chain (updated once a month or so?).  This could be taken out into the mountains and then used to scan people who try to pawn off paper wallets on you.  

On your brochure:

"For payment please bring a paper wallet or bitcoin cheque totalling 100 millies which was loaded before June of this year".


This isn't so hard folks.  People want to do business.  

[Aayush]

Not sure if this is what you are asking but paper wallets aka bitcoin cheques work great.

Make a few dozen and put 0.1 or 0.02 in them or whatever you need.  When it comes to paying, just hand it over.  

The shops are small shops most of them sell eating products which can be an arbitrary small cost, problems come when such small amounts are involved with paper wallets, if people want to eat from multiple stalls they'll have to carry dozens of paper wallets of fixed amounts.

[funkenstein]

Not sure if this is what you are asking but paper wallets aka bitcoin cheques work great.

Make a few dozen and put 0.1 or 0.02 in them or whatever you need.  When it comes to paying, just hand it over.  

The shops are small shops most of them sell eating products which can be an arbitrary small cost, problems come when such small amounts are involved with paper wallets, if people want to eat from multiple stalls they'll have to carry dozens of paper wallets of fixed amounts.

Yup.  Most people are quite used to that these days, but it can be a drag.  An old android phone with no cell plan can also be a nice platform for a real online wallet.  Those can sometimes be easier to use than paper and metal tokens of fixed amounts.  Takes a bit more infrastructure though.