Got a discount for paying with Bitcoin. Are merchants waking up?

[Dr.Bitcoin_Strange]

I have not gotten a discount for paying with Bitcoin, I guess it's because there's not been many services online that I paid using Bitcoin, the ones I paid for with Bitcoin had no discount, probably if there was also many physical businesses that accepts Bitcoin payments, they would have given discount like myself, when I started to accept Bitcoin payment in my furniture business, I did some discount upon the advice I got here. That's attracts people to pay using BTC and also helps promote BTC.

[stompix]

As 3% is a common credit card fee for merchants (in my country they charge up to 7-9% approx.),

Nope, it's not "common"!
I always forget where you live, but this is insane by European standards, even 3% is insane.

We have a contract with ING for our physical shop and the new terms this year are on $30 euros for the POS terminal and 1.25% fees on the total sum at the end of the month.
The worst of the worst offers were for 2.5% and 3.5% for international cards that also needed an FX exchange.

No shop would be able to survive at 9% processing fees!

[slapper]

Last year, Visa and Mastercard earned $198 billion from swipe fees. Billion with a b. And merchants have been trying to fight that through Congress with the Credit Card Competition Act for what, three years now? Four? And it continues to be lobbied into the earth. Meanwhile, some random domain registrar simply bypasses the issue altogether. No legislation required.

Square auto-enabling Lightning for small businesses earlier this year. Basically killed the "merchants won't adopt it" argument overnight. The merchant does not even have to be familiar with what Lightning is. They settle in dollars, fees are basically nothing, no chargebacks. Boring infrastructure and boring infrastructure is what wins.

Saylor tho, lol. The man literally just sold BTC for the first time in years to cover dividend payments on his preferred stock. $1.7 billion in annual obligations. The “never sell” guy sold. Companies do what companies do. But it does bring up a point. His model requires the number to continue to increase indefinitely. Your domain discount works at any price. It is not the same type of adoption.

Will more merchants start making the discount explicit like yours did or if they keep it hidden? Once customers can SEE the Visa tax, that is a different conversation altogether.

Which registrar was this?

[stompix]

Last year, Visa and Mastercard earned $198 billion from swipe fees. Billion with a b. And merchants have been trying to fight that through Congress with the Credit Card Competition Act for what, three years now? Four? And it continues to be lobbied into the earth. Meanwhile, some random domain registrar simply bypasses the issue altogether. No legislation required.

Nice, you just debunked the whole credit cards are expensive stuff 
Visa has processed 16.7 trillion with a T, in payments last year!
So even if they earned 198 billion alone without Mastercard, this makes just 1.18% of their volume, not even close to the 3% claimed here.
https://annualreport.visa.com/financials/default.aspx

[d5000]

I always forget where you live, but this is insane by European standards, even 3% is insane.

9% is indeed the "worst of the worst" where I live (Argentina). The problem is that here they charge a quite high fee when you want fast processing.

Here are the fees of the most popular payment processor MercadoPago.

Credit cards at MercadoPago are around 8% for immediate processing, and ~5.5% for 10 days, and there can be up to 2% additionally for international cards. There is an option of ~2% (1.49% + VAT which is 21%) but settlement time in this case is 35 days, so you will lose a lot due to inflation (about 2-3%, considering the inflation is about 40%/year) and then there's additionally opportunity cost ...

The 1.x % you cite for Visa's totals also includes payments with debit cards. Those have a much lower fee here (about 1-1.5% for QR code payments to 3% for the "Point" point of sale solution).

In the US, 3% seems to be a common credit card fee too, see this article where the example of Square is cited (2.75% to 3.6%).

[tygeade]

Recently I come across a pokemon cards selling shop and they do 5% discount for USDT, not bitcoin but USDT. I understand why they do that though, because it means there is no volatility, bitcoin could go up or down, whereas USDT is just USDT and it will not change.

So yeah, there are places that does discounts for crypto and I think that is awesome. But I sense that they were doing it to save taxes. When accepting crypto customers enjoy discounts whereas merchants save taxes which must be a win-win for both of them and again crypto community will win in the end. I have not seen this trend spreads with many merchants in my country hence cannot assume there is a awareness among merchants but this could be a step stone toward another trigger in the crypto adaption curve.

[WillyAp]

So even if they earned 198 billion alone without Mastercard, this makes just 1.18% of their volume, not even close to the 3% claimed here.
https://annualreport.visa.com/financials/default.aspx

Yes banks and organizations take the rest.
Many people live of those %tages

[d5000]

Yes banks and organizations take the rest.

This is indeed the case according to the article I cited in the answer to @stompix. The card network fee is the biggest fee, but it is not the only "credit card fee" (there is for example also an assessment fee and possibly payment processor fee). So the Visa numbers alone do not show the whole picture.

Software platforms like Square/Mercadopago charge a flat fee which includes all these fees, that's why they charge around 2-4% (normally) and up to 8-9% (for fast processing in countries like Argentina). Then there is the volume model stompix mentioned, where you indeed can get lower fees of sometimes less than 1.5%, but you would also have to pay a monthly base fee per PoS terminal.

In Argentina at least, small shopowners often prefer the flat fee option because the monthly fee may increase the cost they have to pay even more, depending how much they depend on card payments. What they do often is to try to persuade customers to pay with debit cards (1-2% fee) or via bank transfer (no fee) instead. For a shop where card payment is common, $35 (30 €) monthly payment per PoS for a reduced fee of course is a good option and likely to reduce the total fee to about or less than 2% if you are able to get a 1.25% fee in your contract.

So in general I think smaller shops (both online and offline) and those serving a large proportion of international customers (for example, domain registrars like Dynadot where I got the discount) would be more incentived to provide discounts for bitcoin/crypto payments.

[avp2306]

This is what I like to happen in our country, but sad there's no local merchant accepts Bitcoin here.

Upon researching I see this store giving discount if you pay BTC.

Carrefour Rolls Out 20 Percent Discounts for Bitcoin https://www.hokanews.com/2026/01/retail-revolution-carrefour-offers-20.html

Also good to see this big companies accepting Bitcoin https://www.spark.money/tools/bitcoin-merchant-adoption-map and this really shows that merchants are really waking up and Bitcoin adoption on merchants is growing more.

[r_victory]

I remember paying for a domain a few years ago, and it was actually much cheaper than if I had paid with a credit or debit card. It's a shame that there are so few services or products I use that allow me to pay with BTC. In my opinion, even after cryptocurrencies, especially BTC, gained more notoriety, we still lack adoption by business owners.