Bitcoin Bonus Discount Day for merchants

[Kprawn]

I have thought about a excellent way to increase adoption, without rocking the boat. All companies have 1 day in a week or a whole weekend,

where they do something special and give discounts to their customers. Examples of these might be something like a Pensioners Day. On that day,

older people on pension flood the shops to get in on the discounts, offered exclusively for them.


Most vendors and merchants have these SPECIAL days, when goods are on offer for a cheaper price than usual for some reason.

So let's go out there and ask these vendors and merchants to have a SPECIAL "Bitcoin Bonus Discount Day" ...where people paying with

Bitcoin would receive exclusive discounts. { These discounts would have been done for something else in any way, so why not use it for Bitcoin }?


It could be on specific GOODS or SERVICES only or a percentage on ALL purchases. These merchants save on banking fees in any way, so why

not put back some of that savings into growing adoption for Bitcoin to increase their savings ...when more people move over to Bitcoin payment?

You have to pre announce this day, even if it is only for one weekend or even 1 day, to enable people to gear themselves up to start buying some

bitcoins. { for them to find out what it is all about and to acquire some bitcoins }


We need to offer a reason for people to start using Bitcoin. We are not faster, nor cheaper at some times... but we are very Cool and trendy.  

[franky1]

this is an old debate that happened ages ago

and the summary ended up something like
1. for an person to go through the process of signing up and doing the AML/KYC stuff then exchange fiat for bitcoin (some exchanges have a variable 'spot' price of 2-5%) meaning most people could consider themselves at a loss before they even started. and thus the merchant 'discount' needs to be far higher that 2-5% just to counter that

2. getting people to sign up to bitcoin services to buy bitcoin and then move bitcoin to spend bitcoin is a huge burden for the customer and time delay for the merchant where the customer at times may give up even purchasing something because of all the processing required.

3. people see bitcoin something that requires merchants to discount. many many people introduced this way got angry because they were expecting all merchants that accept bitcoin to suddenly offer X% off all the time. (not good business for merchants and or customer service)
since then what could be envisioned as a more viable entry into bitcoin is not a discount day, but a loyalty 'points' bonus. saved up in bitcoins for fiat spenders to then use as they please later, or just save for retirement, as their way in to bitcoin.
eg
in the background: and that loyalty point system (which is the advert for bitcoin). by the merchant signing people up to xapo for instance (pre register x empty xapo accounts) to move small amounts of bitcoin to a account.

..
no long sales pitch in the retail store to explain what bitcoin is. just a "get 1% loyalty points" when you spend normally..  and all a merchant needs to do is say 'here you go, here is your temporary password and username for xapo(for instance), your loyalty points should appear in the next 48 hours.' and thats it.....

and then let xapo (for instance of my example) do the explaining of bitcoin AFTER the customer purchase, thus not hindering merchant trade or interrupting customers desire to buy something they would have bought anyway.

[eternalgloom]

There is already something that's pretty similar to what you are describing called Bitcoin Black Friday.
You can check out some Bitcoin exclusive deals and promotions on http://www.bitcoinblackfriday.com/

They have quite a lot of promotions running.

[Kprawn]

this is an old debate that happened ages ago

and the summary ended up something like
1. for an person to go through the process of signing up and doing the AML/KYC stuff then exchange fiat for bitcoin (some exchanges have a variable 'spot' price of 2-5%) meaning most people could consider themselves at a loss before they even started. and thus the merchant 'discount' needs to be far higher that 2-5% just to counter that

2. getting people to sign up to bitcoin services to buy bitcoin and then move bitcoin to spend bitcoin is a huge burden for the customer and time delay for the merchant where the customer at times may give up even purchasing something because of all the processing required.

3. people see bitcoin something that requires merchants to discount. many many people introduced this way got angry because they were expecting all merchants that accept bitcoin to suddenly offer X% off all the time. (not good business for merchants and or customer service)
since then what could be envisioned as a more viable entry into bitcoin is not a discount day, but a loyalty 'points' bonus. saved up in bitcoins for fiat spenders to then use as they please later, or just save for retirement, as their way in to bitcoin.
eg
in the background: and that loyalty point system (which is the advert for bitcoin). by the merchant signing people up to xapo for instance (pre register x empty xapo accounts) to move small amounts of bitcoin to a account.

..
no long sales pitch in the retail store to explain what bitcoin is. just a "get 1% loyalty points" when you spend normally..  and all a merchant needs to do is say 'here you go, here is your temporary password and username for xapo(for instance), your loyalty points should appear in the next 48 hours.' and thats it.....

and then let xapo (for instance of my example) do the explaining of bitcoin AFTER the customer purchase, thus not hindering merchant trade or interrupting customers desire to buy something they would have bought anyway.

The problem is, we do not want mass adoption linked to third party services. If people can only use Bitcoin through the use of 3rd party services,

then we failed. Yes, Xapo has it's benefits with FREE off-chain transaction and also immediate transaction confirmations.. but it is a centralized

service. These centralized services is a risk, because it can become a second MtGox when it gets compromised. The more people using these

services weakens the security offered by Bitcoin.  

[Wesimon]

If this event happens, wouldn't it be a burden for the merchant as well as the costumers in the aspect of time and efficiency? If such event occurs, obviously that many bitcoin users will go to the shop to claim discounts for the product/service and as a result, blockchain will have bottleneck for pending transactions. If that happened, it would take more time for every transaction to be confirmed. Hence, the time of the merchant and the customers are wasted in waiting for the transaction confirmation.

[franky1]

The problem is, we do not want mass adoption linked to third party services. If people can only use Bitcoin through the use of 3rd party services,

then we failed. Yes, Xapo has it's benefits with FREE off-chain transaction and also immediate transaction confirmations.. but it is a centralized

service. These centralized services is a risk, because it can become a second MtGox when it gets compromised. The more people using these

services weakens the security offered by Bitcoin.  

i dont mean literally xapo. i just used them as an example('for instance') as a way of taking the strain off the retailers pre-selling customers into the idea of bitcoin in the retail stores.

we already know it is not a 10 second sales pitch to explain bitcoin. nor is it a 10 second way to buy bitcoin and then use it.
so imagine this

you want to buy a shirt or some groceries.
which do find most irritating as a customer when retailers do these things (non bitcoin related)
"before we take your money can we talk to you for 10 minutes about the 20 minutes it takes to put your funds into our store credit card that offers to 10% cashback"
or
"here sir is your receipt and at the bottom is a link to a website where you can see your loyalty point bonus

now think of it this way. instead of xapo.. its an LN channel

[szpalata]

There is already something that's pretty similar to what you are describing called Bitcoin Black Friday.
You can check out some Bitcoin exclusive deals and promotions on http://www.bitcoinblackfriday.com/

They have quite a lot of promotions running.

Wow! This looks great , the OP is spot on but I didn't know someone has already come up with this brilliant idea. It seems to me if the Bitcoin community comes together we can be making collective decisions that will inure to the benefit of us all. Some Unknown people out there may have ideas that if shared can improve Bitcoin rather than the fighting from the big men who think they know it all.

[susila_bai]

There is already something that's pretty similar to what you are describing called Bitcoin Black Friday.
You can check out some Bitcoin exclusive deals and promotions on http://www.bitcoinblackfriday.com/

They have quite a lot of promotions running.

Wow! This looks great , the OP is spot on but I didn't know someone has already come up with this brilliant idea. It seems to me if the Bitcoin community comes together we can be making collective decisions that will inure to the benefit of us all. Some Unknown people out there may have ideas that if shared can improve Bitcoin rather than the fighting from the big men who think they know it all.

The is very good but the main problem is the delivery charges, running a bitcoin shop is not easy until you dont find and good courier source which can deliver the products for cheap rates if not the price of the product will become costly and it will be more profitable if the bitcoins are converted to fiat currency and purchase the same product for lesser price directly

[BitMaxz]

I think many merchant has many rebates and bonuses just like in my country where we can pay bills with rebate using bitcoin
Or top up load we can receive 5% rebate and referral bonuses are increase to but in limited time only.
This is one of the reason why more people are choosing bitcoin to use because of bonuses and rebates that i think most customer will not regret
of using bitcoin.
We are now more convenient and wise decision to choose  bitcoin will nearly to become successful as you can see we have many alternative just like big companies like amazon alternative purse.io. shopping like newegg and steam for games.. also here in my country you can buy garena shells or for league of legends without additional fee.
This is the future of bitcoin and more new field of success will happen with bitcoin..

[zahra4577]

Honestly I do not think discounts are going to attract people to bitcoin.Nobody going to adopt something just because he/she will get %2 discount on the service or product because the reason most people hesitate to use btc is the misconceptions associated with bitcoin in particular and cryptocurruncy In general.
We need to spread the awareness if we want mass adoption.

[MingLee]

There is already something that's pretty similar to what you are describing called Bitcoin Black Friday.
You can check out some Bitcoin exclusive deals and promotions on http://www.bitcoinblackfriday.com/

They have quite a lot of promotions running.

Wow! This looks great , the OP is spot on but I didn't know someone has already come up with this brilliant idea. It seems to me if the Bitcoin community comes together we can be making collective decisions that will inure to the benefit of us all. Some Unknown people out there may have ideas that if shared can improve Bitcoin rather than the fighting from the big men who think they know it all.

The is very good but the main problem is the delivery charges, running a bitcoin shop is not easy until you dont find and good courier source which can deliver the products for cheap rates if not the price of the product will become costly and it will be more profitable if the bitcoins are converted to fiat currency and purchase the same product for lesser price directly

Running a shop using Bitcoin should be essentially more or less the same as that of a normal online store, all you might have to do is have some fiat on hand to pay couriers with. People willing to transport your package aren't hard to find for the most part, at least where I am, so I don't know why you'd think of it as being harder to run a Bitcoin shop based off of that.
All that you might suffer is a lack of users if you run exclusively in Bitcoin, but do a mix of Bitcoin and fiat and you should be solid.

[Youresioure]

Some Bitcoin holders don't like to spend their Bitcoins because it's an investment with fine return. But there're times when Bitcoin's advantages comes useful. It's when you're ordering from distant country, want to stay anonymous, need your fiat to pay taxes.. and so on. If anything, a mixed payment politics and a long-term plan to support Bitcoin users could help.

[HabBear]

Great idea, the only thing missing is how do we incent merchants to want to accept bitcoin for payment? While the price movement lately has only been positive, it's usually incredibly volatile. It's hard to run a business when you need to plan for currency risk on top if all other risks a business endures.

[Kprawn]

Great idea, the only thing missing is how do we incent merchants to want to accept bitcoin for payment? While the price movement lately has only been positive, it's usually incredibly volatile. It's hard to run a business when you need to plan for currency risk on top if all other risks a business endures.

Easy answer : Payment processors --> They convert Bitcoin almost immediately and this cancel out any volatility that there might have been.

The incentive for the merchants to start using Bitcoin is the saving in banking fees and not having to deal with all the problems associated with

cash payments. < counterfeit money and risks associated with robbery >   

 

[tobacco123]

This is not really a new idea. The current high fees for transferring payment is actually hindering payment smaller than $100. Even with a discount, it might just cover the cost of transfer fee... Hope the "fee-less" wallet will make a comeback.