Do only crypto payments cost customers?

[tyz]

I have an idea and I am thinking of developing a paid service out of it. I would like to accept only crypto as a means of payment but I am not sure if most people would accept this. Therefore I would like to do a short survey.

Suppose you have $1000 on your Paypal account and $1000 in Bitcoin and you would subscribe to the service for $10 a month. Would you prefer to pay in Paypal or Bitcoin (no matter what kind of service it is)?

[gentlemand]

I'd do Paypal. I'm sure most people here would rather get rid of their fiat than their BTC.

You'd also find that subscriptions would fall away in no time at all if you were crypto only.

Many, many services make a big chunk of their money from users being too lazy to cancel their subscriptions. With crypto you'll be asking customers to weigh up whether they need the service every single time they send the payment.

If the service has wide appeal you're also crippling your potential market by not accommodating the conventional route.

[o_e_l_e_o]

I pay for a couple of recurring costs using bitcoin. It is a hassle compared to fiat to remember these subscriptions and to pay before they run out. I always opt to pay for 6 months or 12 months at a time so I don't have to remember to make the transaction every month and risk by subscription running out if I forget, if I'm too busy, if the mempool is full, etc. I also usually get a discount for paying in bulk, so it works out in my favor as well.

If the only option was a monthly subscription, then I'd probably opt to use fiat since I can just "set and forget" the payment and not have to manually pay it every month.

It also depends on whether the service in question is something I am comfortable letting know my name and bank details, or whether I am comfortable my bank knowing that I am paying for it. If privacy is at all important, then I would opt for bitcoin.

[suchmoon]

I've seen bogus research supposedly showing that crypto is used by 30%, 40%, or some other high percentage of consumers, businesses, etc... don't fall for that. Unless your service is very narrowly crypto-specific so that your customers are far more likely to have access to Bitcoin to pay for it, you'd be giving up a huge opportunity. Fiat is king. Take it when they give it to you. Convert it to Bitcoin if you must although your costs are likely to be fiat-based anyway and depending your tax situation it might be a hassle to deal with crypto directly and not e.g. through a payment processor.

[bullrun2024bro]

Suppose you have $1000 on your Paypal account and $1000 in Bitcoin and you would subscribe to the service for $10 a month. Would you prefer to pay in Paypal or Bitcoin (no matter what kind of service it is)?

Very interesting question. In my case I would say it depends. I am currently paying my Netflix and App Store subscriptions with gift cards, which I purchase for BTC. On the other hand all my other subscriptions for DAZN, newspapers, food oderings etc. are paid via PayPal.

PayPal is pretty easy to use and if you're used to it, I guess most (regular) people won't switch to BTC if they already own a PayPal account.

Nevertheless, I personally would prefer to use BTC more often, so I suggest you to try it out. I am sure here in the forum there are several people who would like to spend some of their BTC for a cool service, if it would be possible.

[smyslov]

I have an idea and I am thinking of developing a paid service out of it. I would like to accept only crypto as a means of payment but I am not sure if most people would accept this. Therefore I would like to do a short survey.

Suppose you have $1000 on your Paypal account and $1000 in Bitcoin and you would subscribe to the service for $10 a month. Would you prefer to pay in Paypal or Bitcoin (no matter what kind of service it is)?

I'd choose Paypal because of the current situation, we just finished halving and I expect Bitcoin to have another all time high those, those $10 worth of Bitcoin you've used could be worth $50 after a few months, and besides I don't want to bother myself with paying Bitcoin every month manually, Paypal has this automatic payment option in your dashboard.

[webtricks]

I would say the type of service you providing has great say in whether 'crypto only' will help you positively or negatively. If you are deciding to provide common services like Hosting then 'crypto only' tag will help you since there are hundreds of websites providing hosting service in fiat (PayPal) and being crypto-based hosting service will help you gaining access to specific niche. But if you are deciding to provide something different as a general online service then 'more payment options' = 'better reach'.

Another important aspect is fees if you are planning to shift 'burden of fees' to customers. If your service cost something around $10 and so then PayPal is surely a cheaper alternative. You only have to pay fees in the range of $0.44 - $0.74 on PayPal for $10 but Bitcoin will cost you $1.00 - $1.80 and it will also consume time to confirm. But if your service cost in range of $50 or above then bitcoin plus other cryptocurrencies are much more cheaper than PayPal or Debit/Credit Card payments.

PS: I don't have problem paying $10 every month manually if site can send me timely intimation on email along with already generated invoice so I just have to send BTC on address to continue service.

[LTU_btc]

Well, why not both? Giving more payment option to customers is always good thing. Not many services stick with just one payment option. PayPal, credit cards, Bitcoin, Skrill and etc. It would be too risky to stick with Bitcoin payment option only. Unless your service is focused on crypto users only.
What option I would choose, it depends on service. For something like Netflix, I would go with PayPal, main reasons why mentioned by @o_e_l_e_o. But when I would like to stay anonymous, something like IPTV subscription, obviously I would pick Bitcoin.

[TheUltraElite]

I would say the best way to survey this is to provide both these payment options and then see what is the outcome. Discussing it will not reach anywhere fruitful unless you attempt to apply it. Whichever payment method you see is having a bigger share, continue with that as the permanent method there. The only bad effect is that the one which gains lesser action if removed might lead to a backlash on your traffic.

In general if it not a crypto-niche service the fiat payment system will be more popular. What service is it anyway?

[joniboini]

If that $10 monthly fee needs to be paid monthly, I'd go with fiat. Most obvious reason is due to BTC volatility, which I can't predict how much I need pay the next 5 months. It might be higher or lower, while I want to keep as many sats as possible.

[ralle14]

If i'm given both options to pay for a service i'll always use Paypal, I don't use them but i've tried a similar payment processor before and for the most part they're pretty convenient. Currently I use Bitcoin most of the time and one of the reasons why I use them over other options available is because my fiat account got blocked. Knowing that most people use fiat I also have to suggest fiat over Bitcoin since there's always a solution for us Bitcoin spenders if we really want to avail it.

[Eureka_07]

Would you prefer to pay in Paypal or Bitcoin (no matter what kind of service it is)?

I'll pay either through paypal or bitcoin depending on the current value of Bitcoin.
If you care enough about your money, ofcourse you'll not use btc if it's value is lower than the time you bought it.
If that's the case, I will pay in Paypal and vice versa.

For example, assumingly the ratio of Bitcoin and USD is 1:1 (1btc:1usd). But you bought your btc at 0.5btc:1usd.
If you decided to use your bitcoin for the payment, that means you lost half of your investment.

So choose your payment method depending on btc's current value.

[Coin_trader]

If paypal and bitcoin is the only choices then I preferred paypal. Bitcoin rate is greater than PayPal even though it has same amount. A 100$ BTC is greater than 100$ paypal funds in forum currency exchange section and other currency exchange site like paxpul and localbitcoin. Atleast 10% additional to the value of your BTC so it will be a waste to used BTC as direct payment compared to PayPal. 

[sheenshane]

The problem of Bitcoin holders will not spend Bitcoin when they saw that the market had crashed prices. It the same to me when I want to purchase an item on the merchant, when Bitcoin down I will not use it.

But this would depend on the situation, the possible factor that might people who want to pay Bitcoin paying online just because of their privacy. Paypal is also a good option when Bitcoin price down. So, I suggest taking them all as your mode of payment, the wide variety of payment methods will get more costumers and possible it will have an impact to your average daily/monthly sales.

Paypal or Bitcoin isn't a problem, they had choices in different circumstances may happen.

[tyKiwanuka]

Would you prefer to pay in Paypal or Bitcoin (no matter what kind of service it is)?

I would do Paypal, since it's more convenient for me in the end all things considered. But especially with what @o_e_l_e_o mentioned regarding maybe wanting to stay kind of anonymous, I could also see me going the BTC route. Really hard to give an one fits all opinion, with the few information you provided


I think your service will have something to do with gambling/betting and if thats the case, then you should look into Skrill/Neteller/ecoPayz as well, Paypal is not that common with gambling.

As @suchmoon hinted, fiat is still the elephant in the room in general and it's the same with betting/gambling. Don't get fooled by the gambling section, where there seems to be a huge hype around gambling with crypto. Gambling is still a fiat business; but it's getting better


This survey in general is probably not very representative in a Bitcoin forum. If you have 50/50 here, you will have 10/90 in a non-crypto forum - or even less. Not offering any kind of fiat payment, will cost you a lot of potential customers imo.

[stomachgrowls]

If that $10 monthly fee needs to be paid monthly, I'd go with fiat. Most obvious reason is due to BTC volatility, which I can't predict how much I need pay the next 5 months. It might be higher or lower, while I want to keep as many sats as possible.

Im having the same thoughts and pretty sure that majority would just simply use up their fiat when it comes to paying up any service they are involved into and if someone do accumulate bitcoin as much as he can then
he wont really have those thoughts in using it even on the simpliest service or offer out there but instead he would save it up since we do know the potential of btc in future years to come.

Also and as said why would need to choose one if we can have them both? Having more options would solve out the problem because you do let users do choose up on what they do prefer.

You would cater both who do like to use Paypal and the one who would like to use crypto instead. Its their choice!

[shield132]

I'd do Paypal. I'm sure most people here would rather get rid of their fiat than their BTC.

You'd also find that subscriptions would fall away in no time at all if you were crypto only.

Many, many services make a big chunk of their money from users being too lazy to cancel their subscriptions. With crypto you'll be asking customers to weigh up whether they need the service every single time they send the payment.

If the service has wide appeal you're also crippling your potential market by not accommodating the conventional route.

100% true! Believe me, there are really a lot of people (from personal experience) who are too lazy to cancel their subscriptions and even move funds from their wallet to get rid of extra charges.
Do you know what's the demand on gift cards that you can buy via cryptocurrencies? I guess there should be the same demand on service subscriptions via crypto. For example, if person buys amazon gift cards via btc, there is higher chance he/she will be happy to buy prime membership with btc too. Same applies to others too like spotify and so on.
In overall, the more opportunities, the better for customers. If I don't have money on my visa card but somehow have some bucks on bitcoin wallet, will be happy to pay spotify subscription via it and don't let it to cancel out.

[hugeblack]

Suppose you have $1000 on your Paypal account and $1000 in Bitcoin and you would subscribe to the service for $10 a month. Would you prefer to pay in Paypal or Bitcoin (no matter what kind of service it is)?

Bitcoin is a good model against inflation, so no one will adjust the fees monthly to pay the service because it may equal more than 10 dollars, and the price increases in the future, so you will not find a person willing to pay 120 dollars a month knowing that their value will become 200 dollars after a year.

I don’t know why some comments talk about paying manually, it can be done automatically every month without having to pay manually.
Why not solve the problem by issuing a balance in BTC and USD?

The aspect that you should focus on is fees and add many payment options available.
If the service is BTC-related, make it unique.

[o_e_l_e_o]

I don’t know why some comments talk about paying manually, it can be done automatically every month without having to pay manually.

Can you explain? What wallet are you using that lets you set up automatic, recurring, monthly payments? I suppose it is possible if you sign a bunch of transaction in advance and program your wallet to broadcast them at a later date, but it means locking up a UTXO for each month in advance.

Or do you mean creating an account with the service in question, topping up the account with a higher single payment, and then debiting the account on a monthly basis? This would be far easier to set up, but also involves trusting a third party to hold your money.

[shield132]

I don’t know why some comments talk about paying manually, it can be done automatically every month without having to pay manually.
Why not solve the problem by issuing a balance in BTC and USD?

The aspect that you should focus on is fees and add many payment options available.
If the service is BTC-related, make it unique.

And may I ask, how? If you create a service provider like coingate, bitpay and allow users to top up their account with, for example $100 and then connect this account to spotify, netflix, etc and then automatically make payments from already filled account, then yeah but otherwise, how? How will I be able to automatically pay on given adress like scheduled? Also if someone has to do what o_e_l_e_o said in first sentence, then I guess it looks less comfortable, yeah? And what people want? Comfort, so I don't think such way will work for profit purposes and won't attract customers.