Accepting bitcoin as payment for my business

[Pokapoka124]

I have been in the forum for some time learning different aspects of bitcoin, now I want to be more practical about bitcoin as a currency. I introduced crypto payments for my business and have been making sales lately. I'm in the clothing industry and I believe in crypto. I have my wallet addresses and barcode printed at the door and pos! For now, I accept Bitcoin, usdt and Etheruem. These are 3 popular coins in my community.
So far customer feedback has been good. Some people are glad to be able to use bitcoin to actually pay for a service, Nigeria is a growing market you see. In addition it has also got my business attraction from customers who are in the crypto space. The challenge though is the issue of transaction fees, 8 out of 10 customers aren't exposed and only use the blockchain wallet. I try to educate them on other wallets with low transaction fees like electrum.
I feel good about this new development. I get to interact with customers about Bitcoin and share ideas

[1714854465]

1714854465

[1714854465]

1714854465

[mk4]

1. Congrats on your business
2. Electrum doesn't have cheaper fees. Probably better fee recommendations, but definitely not cheaper fees.
3. Check out Lightning wallets such as Phoenix[1]. So far it's the best I know in terms of noob-friendliness. I created a thread[1] in the past and some of our fellow members have voiced their opinions concerning the wallet. So far so good.

[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5250677

[Coin_trader]

I have been in the forum for some time learning different aspects of bitcoin, now I want to be more practical about bitcoin as a currency. I introduced crypto payments for my business and have been making sales lately. I'm in the clothing industry and I believe in crypto. I have my wallet addresses and barcode printed at the door and pos! For now, I accept Bitcoin, and Etheruem. These are 3 popular coins in my community.
So far customer feedback has been good. Some people are glad to be able to use bitcoin to actually pay for a service, Nigeria is a growing market you see. In addition it has also got my business attraction from customers who are in the crypto space. The challenge though is the issue of transaction fees, 8 out of 10 customers aren't exposed and only use the blockchain wallet. I try to educate them on other wallets with low transaction fees like electrum.
I feel good about this new development. I get to interact with customers about Bitcoin and share ideas

Wow, I'm a clothing business owner here in Philippines and I'm accepting cryptocurrency as payment, But so far only few is interested to pay in crypto and many people here preferred fiat payment even though I always offer a great discount when purchasing using cryptocurrency. Sometimes I think that crypto user in my country don't buy new clothes online and rather spend it to invest more on crypto currency. I'm interested to know what will be your plan for the volatility of the price of Bitcon. Its good if it moves upwards but business will really hurt once it go south.

BTW this is my clothing business ANN thread here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5346304.msg57334907#msg57334907

Maybe you should create one too on your local board so that they will support you and purchase some on your store just like what I did on my crypto friend. 

[Lucius]

If you mean that blockchain wallet, then it is possible to set a custom fee there as well as on Electrum - the only difference is that Electrum has much better options like coin control and you can bump the fee. I think you need to teach them how to properly determine the fee (from mempool data), and given the size of the transactions.

Maybe you could make one info corner in the store regarding payments with cryptocurrencies. This would help those who are not quite sure how to make a payment efficiently, but it might also be of interest to some others who have not yet come into contact with such a method of payment.

[Ali771samir]

Good job
I admire you for trying to contribute to the economic transformation in the world, surely you can experience faster payments if you can make bitcoin payments in the garment industry, in addition to being able to have a lot of customers from all over the world.
Good luck, mate.

[jackg]

Did you say you accept 3 coins? I'm curious what the third is (since you mentioned bitcoin and ethereum only).

This is quite good for the adoption of cryptocurrency and seems like it'd be about as easy as contactless - just scanning a qr code, putting in the amount and going from there.

If you grow further, you can issue payment requests to customers either via a tablet or a screen on your PoS if they ever send the wrong amount as then you'll be able to set how much you request (with the qr code request mechanism, you can give them each an individual address to pay then too if you wanted to privatise your companies finances a bit).

[ranochigo]

Don't use on-chain transactions for small amounts, it isn't economical. A $5 USD transaction would be 0.0001BTC, and that excludes the fees paid by the customer, the fees paid by you in the future as well as the time needed for the transaction to get a confirmation. If you want a speedier process and something that doesn't incur that much fees, consider lightning network. I find that the adoption is rather small, partly due to the lack of motivation for people to switch. It'll be better for more merchants to progressively start to adopt alternative solutions.

[dkbit98]

The challenge though is the issue of transaction fees, 8 out of 10 customers aren't exposed and only use the blockchain wallet. I try to educate them on other wallets with low transaction fees like electrum.

Electrum is not having any special low fees, but it's better than any online wallet because you can set fees manually, if you know what you are doing.
I would suggest that your customers use bc1 bech32 addresses to lower transaction fees, and maybe give special discount if they purchase more goods on weekend when fees are usually cheaper.
Even now anyone can send BTC with low fee of only 1 sat/vB or $0.07, but you can always add alternative option off accepting Lightning Network payments.

[worle1bm]

I have been in the forum for some time learning different aspects of bitcoin, now I want to be more practical about bitcoin as a currency. I introduced crypto payments for my business and have been making sales lately. I'm in the clothing industry and I believe in crypto. I have my wallet addresses and barcode printed at the door and pos! For now, I accept Bitcoin, and Etheruem. These are 3 popular coins in my community.

Congratulations on setting up your crypto clothing business and it's good that a member is accepting btc and crypto payments for his sale to customers and promoting and awaring people about the same at his level.You can use LN for payment with customers and use that wallet for convenience and fees related issues.Overall it's good to see people accepting btc as payment mode.

You have mentioned 3 most popular coins in your area but you have mentioned only bitcoin and ETH and what's the other coin you are talking about?

[avikz]

I have been in the forum for some time learning different aspects of bitcoin, now I want to be more practical about bitcoin as a currency. I introduced crypto payments for my business and have been making sales lately. I'm in the clothing industry and I believe in crypto. I have my wallet addresses and barcode printed at the door and pos! For now, I accept Bitcoin, and Etheruem. These are 3 popular coins in my community.
So far customer feedback has been good. Some people are glad to be able to use bitcoin to actually pay for a service, Nigeria is a growing market you see. In addition it has also got my business attraction from customers who are in the crypto space. The challenge though is the issue of transaction fees, 8 out of 10 customers aren't exposed and only use the blockchain wallet. I try to educate them on other wallets with low transaction fees like electrum.
I feel good about this new development. I get to interact with customers about Bitcoin and share ideas

Many congratulations! I too have a POD store running successfully but unable to use crypto as a payment method because the government is unable to provide a legal framework. However I am little unsure if I should be accepting bitcoin or other cryptos even if my government provides me with a legal framework.

How are you hedging the extreme price volatility of cryptos? Are you settling the cryptos against cash immediately after making the sales? Or are you holding it back for a better pricing in future?

Since Clothing business doesn't have a great amount of margin, need to understand the plan.

[buwaytress]

Like Lucius says, offer an alternative payment or help toolbox -- even regular merchants usually display options with cheaper fees. Might encourage them to try out something with lower fees if they saw an info tool tip that says "want cheaper fees?" click here. There are also lightning apps like Bitkassa that helps users pay easily on L2 (how difficult it is I don't know but they have a really good team to help out). I don't normally suggest things I don't even try out myself but there's an online community full of merchs using it and they seem pretty happy.

Don't forget to add your shop to sites like Coinmap! Visibility doesn't hurt =)

[Dhoe]

I accept bitcoin as payment for my business, I think you have done a good job, because by accepting bitcoin for your business, your customers will automatically increase, and your company will be more widely known, and for sure your company will progress too.

[Kittygalore]

I accept bitcoin as payment for my business, I think you have done a good job, because by accepting bitcoin for your business, your customers will automatically increase, and your company will be more widely known, and for sure your company will progress too.

I would've said that it won't work but given how famous bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are right now, I think that this is the right way to go, back then I was skeptic about it since not a lot of people knows a thing about them. Progress I guess is a good thing for bitcoin.

[Pokapoka124]

Did you say you accept 3 coins? I'm curious what the third is (since you mentioned bitcoin and ethereum only).

The third is usdt because it is a stable coin and serve as a backing.
My plan is to hodl bitcoins as much as I can. Before now I usually keep 40% of my monthly earnings in bitcoin. I'm not worried about the volatility of bitcoin. I'm a strong believer in bitcoin and I'm in for the long term.

This is quite good for the adoption of cryptocurrency and seems like it'd be about as easy as contactless - just scanning a qr code, putting in the amount and going from there.

If you grow further, you can issue payment requests to customers either via a tablet or a screen on your PoS if they ever send the wrong amount as then you'll be able to set how much you request (with the qr code request mechanism, you can give them each an individual address to pay then too if you wanted to anonymise yourself).

Thanks for your insight. I think that's a good idea

 

<..>

Nice to meet a colleague here. My country men are fashionable and like to express their culture in their clothings. Thanks I will be creating an ANN thread soon. Hopefully I would get good response from the community.

[BOAEDAN]

accepting bitcoin as payment for your business is a very good idea, because considering bitcoin is very popular, and there are many who hold bitcoin, in fact almost all countries have adopted bitcoin, so I think the steps you take will be followed by other companies, because by receiving bitcoins, your company will automatically become famous, and your customers will increase. I hope your company is successful..

[zanezane]

I accept bitcoin as payment for my business, I think you have done a good job, because by accepting bitcoin for your business, your customers will automatically increase, and your company will be more widely known, and for sure your company will progress too.

I haven't seen one business in my area that's been doing what you're doing although you cryptocurrencies is a lot more popular in my country. Although I feel like even if there's one business in my local area, I think that not a lot of people are going to be using it as a payment method.

[Jercyhora2]

Just in case the Lightning network hasn’t been discovered yet, I probably wouldn’t recommend it to my acquaintances as a new payment option. But there is already a Lightning network, even though I'm not very familiar with it yet, it can help a lot in our daily lives. In case this is not yet discovered, users will most likely only pay a large amount to be able to ship from one person to another quickly and there is a lower fee per transaction.

[rikybrosh]

That's smart decision, actually you also embrace bigger market which is very potential. Even I want to buy your products too but unfortunately we are in the different country. Shipping cost will be very expensive. You can use cryptocurrency related e-commerce too, I think it can increase your sale. It seems that most of cryptocurrencies price are still very volatile, maybe you can use vendor service when your business is getting bigger.

[Ararbermas]

I have been in the forum for some time learning different aspects of bitcoin, now I want to be more practical about bitcoin as a currency. I introduced crypto payments for my business and have been making sales lately. I'm in the clothing industry and I believe in crypto. I have my wallet addresses and barcode printed at the door and pos! For now, I accept Bitcoin, and Etheruem. These are 3 popular coins in my community.
So far customer feedback has been good. Some people are glad to be able to use bitcoin to actually pay for a service, Nigeria is a growing market you see. In addition it has also got my business attraction from customers who are in the crypto space. The challenge though is the issue of transaction fees, 8 out of 10 customers aren't exposed and only use the blockchain wallet. I try to educate them on other wallets with low transaction fees like electrum.
I feel good about this new development. I get to interact with customers about Bitcoin and share ideas

well congrats to you mate, indeed it's a good idea to make the payment so easy and you know instead of using any digital currency its good to rely with blockchain because at the same time you can get benefits from it when market is in bullish mode. Lol
by the way if i were you mate make a poster as well how they can pay bitcoin and ethereum with low fees so that they can follow the steps immediately rather than teaching them one by one wherein it will take time for sure  

[Kakmakr]

Yes, the transaction fees are a issue with a lot of retailers... but when they switch to "Lightning Network" wallets... the fees are not an issue anymore and the bonus is "near instant" confirmations. The problem is... not a lot of people are familiar with the Lightning Network yet, so the slow adoption make it a bit of a challenge.   

What Exchange are most of your people in Nigeria using? The transfer within an Exchange is not as expensive as a payment to an external Bitcoin address from these Exchanges. (So if you keep the coin on the same exchange... then the transfer of the coins are a bit cheaper.. it is only expensive when you withdraw from the exchange)