I am going to lobby UK High St. retailers

[yenom]

I'm putting a plan together to ask UK High St. retailers what their plans are (if any) to accept bitcoin as payment. My aim is to find out for myself how serious the High St. is about bitcoin, and to test the level of knowledge/interest from major retailers in bitcoin.

My email to them will be:

Hello,

As you are probably aware a new payment network is rapidly gaining adoption across the world. The payment network already exceeds the transaction value of PayPal, and is on track to exceed in terms of number of transactions too. This payment network is called bitcoin. Advantages to you as a retailer are:

Lower transaction costs - you do not need to pay/charge for credit card fees, banking fees.
Promotional value - if you declare you are accepting bitcoin it shows that you are a forward-looking innovative company and you will certainly get a lot of media attention from this declaration
Competitive advantage - you will take a lead over your competitors by investing in the network early

In the last month alone, the number of merchants accepting bitcoin worldwide has grown 173%. Investment in the bitcoin infrastructure has grown 17%. The number of consumer wallets has grown by 63%. Sources: www.bitcoinpulse.com

As you can see, the bitcoin payment network is here to stay, that much is certain, and I would like to know when you plan to investigate it, and ultimately offer it to your customers as a payment option.

Regards,
yenom


My current target list is:
John Lewis
Tesco
Sainsbury
Asda
Morrison
Co-operative
M&S
Boots
Amazon
Argos
Next
B&Q
Debenhams
ASOS
New Look
River Island
Thomas Cook
Currys
Cineworld
IKEA

I would appreciate any modifications to my communication that you think I should adopt and any retailers you think I should add. I will post all responses from the retailers to this thread along with some metrics such as response time, number of requests to get an answer, etc.

Thanks

[1715634860]

1715634860

[Desensitizer]

I'd consider adding potential success stories to show that the system works. Bitcoin related marketplaces that are legitimate and recognized would be a plus. The story about the Tesla car from the Lambo dealership that sold for bitcoins would also bolster your sales pitch.

[doof]

Nothing is certain.  The problem is just a business problem.  The cost of integration < amount of money saved + amount of new business acquired

Integration into these systems are big.  POS vendors, testing, roll outs are massive.  Hundreds of thousands of pounds.  99% of their customers won't have even heard of bit coins.

I wish you the best, but Id say start small.  Its easy for a small shop to implement a coinkite pos, and gives them a USP over the big boys.

I was working at photo box.co.uk in early 2000 when paypal was gaining mass and had a lot of customers wanting it.

[doof]

Also these markets don't make sense.  Its easier to go to sainsbury for a bottle of milk and pay with cash (or pay wave etc).  Bitcoin in these use cases actually adds to the problem.

Print or display qr code, fumble around with phone app, scan, prey theres internet.  I bet a lot of the tills are internet connected either.  Why would they be?  Who wants to expose their corporate POS system to the internet!

[lclc]

I agree with doof, better talk to small businesses first.
And add links where they can get more informations.

I'd also list the no-chargebacks "feature"

[Shermo]

Surely the best targets are those that are mostly cash only and don't accept cards due to their fees. Things like butchers and groceries stores.

[yenom]

Thanks great points, keep them coming. Regarding the ease of use at PoS, I can foresee a time when bitcoins get loaded onto some kind of "card" or device, or even your NFC phone and you can use the hardware device in the same way as contactless debit cards now. Maybe in one or two years?

[FlappySocks]

The problem in the UK at the moment it actually obtaining Bitcoins.  Any retailer is going to want to know how their customers get hold of them.

This will hopfully change next month. http://www.coindesk.com/zipzap-offer-cash-bitcoin-service-28000-uk-locations/

It will be worth pointing out, that there is also an opportunity for retailers to sell bitcoins.

I would start small.  Independent traders. Pubs. Car Boot sellers even.

[Twipple]

So what's your intentions if say for example B&Q turn round and say "Mmm that sounds good, we're interested!" what do you do from there ?

[B!tC0in]

Great Idea, I used to work in the a cash office for a large UK retailer, essentially doing bookwork, sorting till floats and counting paper money. Have long thought bitcoin would make that job completely redundant as it would all be mechanised. However until bitcoin or digital currency largely replaces cash, which wont happen for a while, it is unlikely that large retailers will wish to adopt bitcoin as it adds more effort and requires more training and expenditure to teach staff how to accept this new form of currency, than would likely be benefiting them in extra revenue. Many of these large companies also have strong ties with central banks. Hopefully once smaller companies start accepting it, increasing their revenue and as bitcoins user base increases even further it will simply become uneconomical for big companies not to accept decentralised, digital pavements.

[medUSA]

The queues in tesco before check out are long enough, imagine standing and waiting for confirmations after check out. I think we should start with Computer Exchange, they accept PayPal now, and they should be more open minded on bitcoins.

[yenom]

Thanks again for the comments.

@medUSA
I think over time the major retailers will simply wait for transactions to be seen on the network and the payment will be instant with a contactless bitcoin card. This is how I see it happening. When buying a car or something then maybe retailers will wait for 2 maybe 3 confirmations.

@B!tC0in
Yes there will be some up-front investment required to accommodate bitcoin. However the retailers will calculate the costs saved for using bitcoin over debit and credit cards (and indeed cash because that costs money too). They will then calculate time taken to recoup their investment, if that figure is under three years then I can see them going for it. Haven't done the maths myself as I don't know the costs involved.

@Twipple
Educate them, arrange a meeting maybe. Get them to understand the benefits to them as a retailer.

@FlappySocks
Yes. still an issue at the moment, but if they start investing in the infrastructure now they will gain competitive advantage.

[genjix]

Your email is too long and looks like spam. No one is ever going to read that. Especially if it goes to low level employees first. You link a Bitcoin website as your source.

[cryptasm]

It's a good idea, I think the best plan would be to target small private retailers first, kind of like a grassroots approach. If you could organise a couple of people in every city/town to go round with some printouts/documents clearly explaining the simplicity and benefits of Bitcoin (emails are ok but they are easily ignored and may just end up being deleted as spam) it would be a lot more effective in my opinion. Will be interesting to hear any responses from the retailers you've contacted.

[qiwoman]

I would go for the the more localized shops. What about all the corner shops and health food stores. Also target New Age and Gifty type shops and those who are very forward thinking. Just an idea as these types of groups are always interested in the Fringe aspects of anything including Finance until we can get it more mainstream.

[General_A]

Your email is too long and looks like spam. No one is ever going to read that. Especially if it goes to low level employees first. You link a Bitcoin website as your source.

I totally agree - make your opening sentence short and snappy - to engage the reader. If you want PM me, I would be interested in helping out !

[StarfishPrime]

Thanks great points, keep them coming. Regarding the ease of use at PoS, I can foresee a time when bitcoins get loaded onto some kind of "card" or device, or even your NFC phone and you can use the hardware device in the same way as contactless debit cards now. Maybe in one or two years?

Existing POS solutions are really not too workable for major high-volume retailers like these. They're very unlikely to adopt a solution that is cumbersome and involves people fidgeting with phone apps and waiting for confirmations.

There is a solution soon to be released which is almost exactly what you describe (including NFC): OpenCXP (http://www.opencxp.org).
Presently it's in pre-release RFC (request for comment) stage, the official release should be coming before year end.

[stealthman]

I can help with bitcoin posters for retailers as they will need to make people now of the payment capabilities. Let me know if you are still in that.