Does the coffee shop/ restaurant/ bakery/ gift shop etc charge a premium to accept bitcoin when you walk in and buy from them using bitcoin compared to the local fiat price?
If so.. how much in your experience/area?
There is no reason for a shop to charge a premium.
However you do have to figure in the buy sell spread. The shop is obviously going to use a btc to fiat conversation rate based on the sell value as that is the value they will get. You however paid the buy rate. Assuming you used the same exchange (buy sell prices vary widely on different exchanges) and the btc price didn't change you would in fact pay a premium.
Luckily the buy sell spread has tightened up over the last six months.
this guy gets it. merchants can say that they are converting at bitstamp price ($5 higher than btc-e.com) but behind the scenes, what the customer may not know and wont find out is that he is converting at btc-e.com and getting an extra $5 per bitcoin cash-out.
that is the merchants personal choice. basically bitcoiners know that bitcoin can change in value at any moment. So as long as the bitcoin price shown is not exceedingly high compared to the average. then merchants can charge any price inbetween.
also you have to realise that bitcoin customers usually hold bitcoins for a few months, so they are usually in profit due to the deflationary nature of bitcoin. so customers should not be expecting discounts as thats just customer greed. merchants cant often discount prices, simply to hoard for the deflation to make them break even months later. instead they need to buy stock alot sooner, so in many cases of small 'mom and pop' stores they will want to be at break even or profit within a few days.
only large corporate merchants can afford to hoard for profit, thus offer discount. so i truly do hope all you bitcoiners that have the mindset that merchants should offer discounts as standard, to please take 'mom and pop' stores inability to discount into consideration.
