Specifically I am asking, why arent savings being passed down to the consumer?
Just as there gas stations incentivize people to use cash, why are merchants generally refusing use of bitcoin as a method of payment.
Every single merchant is generally insulated and guaranteed against price fluctuations of bitcoin, but yet none of them seem willing to pass these savings onto the consumer.
Why?
Even if you advertise a discount of 0.5% it becomes a legitimate talking point and tool to demonstrate real world advantages over CC, no matter how diminutive savings are, they still become tangible. This becomes especially useful when crafting arguments for utilizing bitcoin.
As an industry and early adopters, we should demand that these merchants share their reduction in cost of transactions.
Because to have a merchant account its not free to accept bitcoin. It's 1% or something with bitpay. To get a credit card processor its 1%-3% depending on what you sell. So say its 2% for middle ground (which is actually high..) someone buys something that's $10, its 2% to process it, and usually around $0.25 fee. So its only $0.50 cheaper.
What incentive is that to use bitcoin?
Credit card processors usually charge a fixed amount (~$0.25) plus a percentage (I would say that even 2% would be low, I would argue that 2% would be the lower bound, and a more realistic rate would be ~3% on average, at least, and more if you are in an industry that has a lot of chargebacks.
