Marketing Bitcoin with Merchants: Irreversible Payments

[cloud9]

Bitcoin should really be promoted for acceptance by all mainstream Merchants for the fact that it allows for irreversible payments (when a buyer has downloaded an application or some electronic work, for example).

It will be important for the merchant to do an immediate exchange from BTC to his currency of choice though if he would prefer not to be exposed to the BTC exchange rate.  Available current BTC market depth on the exchanges will play the biggest role for the merchant to price his goods in BTC.  With all this data available and interchangeable online (MtGox.com and bitcoincharts.com), this can all be done programmatically.

[YOSHIE]

Bitcoin should really be promoted for acceptance by all mainstream Merchants for the fact that it allows for irreversible payments (when a buyer has downloaded an application or some electronic work, for example).

Too scared, that's what some merchants told me to accept Bitcoin as a payment method.

In 2020+2021, if I'm not mistaken, Covid/pandemic, there were several traders in my area who used the Bitcoin payment method directly to the wallet or exchange they owned, but entering 2023 until now 2026 they no longer serve Bitcoin payments.

Long story short, I dared to ask, why don't you accept payments in Bitcoin anymore, if you are a trader it's certainly easier.
The answer, short of my loss receiving Bitcoin payments in my trades, he said so.
He once sold his trade for $2000 in Bitcoin, At that time, two days before the Bitcoin price fell, the trading price was $1500 in Bitcoin at that time, a long process of waiting for the Bitcoin price to rise.

And something like that happened several times, because of which he concluded that he would no longer accept Bitcoin payments anymore.

[BlackHatCoiner]

The problems with merchants and Bitcoin adoption are two:

• Capital gains tax: By law, most merchants have to pay capital gains tax on top of income tax.
• Accepting a different currency adds a lot of friction. There is very little to gain for a merchant by adopting an internet currency. If irreversible payments (for practical matters) is important, they can go with a stablecoin.

[d5000]

Lol. Seems nobody noticed that here someone hijacked an 15 year old thread, where even MtGox is still mentioned (do Gen Alpha Bitcoiners know that name still?). But yeah, it's one of my favourite topics ...

Too scared, that's what some merchants told me to accept Bitcoin as a payment method.

In 2020+2021, if I'm not mistaken, Covid/pandemic, there were several traders in my area who used the Bitcoin payment method directly to the wallet or exchange they owned, but entering 2023 until now 2026 they no longer serve Bitcoin payments.

It's strange but I got the exact opposite impression. As I wrote in another thread, some big platforms have added Bitcoin payment option in the last 3 years.

My guess is that perhaps the 2022 bear wiped some smaller merchants with bad hedging strategy out, but then the 2024 ETF approval instead inspired confidence again and larger merchants enabled it. In some cases, like Dynadot, it looks they accept it even natively without Bitpay-style processor. Of course where I stumbled upon Bitcoin payments always also stablecoins are accepted, but I've never seen a place where I only can pay with stablecoin, but not with Bitcoin.

You have many options for hedging without using a payment processor and avoid the high fees (and possibly even KYC):

- connect the deposit addresses with an exchange via an automated software solution (i guess that is what some merchants do now, and there may be IT service providers who install and maintain such a solution)
- try to design a strategy, like selling BTC income if the market looks overheated, and hodl it when the market is falling or in the crypto winter.
- or use BTC as part of a long term holding.

Regarding capital gains tax, there are several software solutions to automate tax calculation and you also of course only pay that tax if Bitcoin is worth more than in the previous year.

[Moreno233]

The problems with merchants and Bitcoin adoption are two:

• Capital gains tax: By law, most merchants have to pay capital gains tax on top of income tax.
• Accepting a different currency adds a lot of friction. There is very little to gain for a merchant by adopting an internet currency. If irreversible payments (for practical matters) is important, they can go with a stablecoin.

Taxes are not among the major problems with Bitcoin in my country as there is practically no taxes on Bitcoin. What stand as a major obstacle here is the volatility of Bitcoin which makes most people skeptical about accepting it and the few that does do no hesitate to convert to stablecoins. Majority of the people that hold own Bitcoin here are mostly holders who do not care about the volatility but are holding for long.

[hd49728]

Too scared, that's what some merchants told me to accept Bitcoin as a payment method.

In 2020+2021, if I'm not mistaken, Covid/pandemic, there were several traders in my area who used the Bitcoin payment method directly to the wallet or exchange they owned, but entering 2023 until now 2026 they no longer serve Bitcoin payments.

Long story short, I dared to ask, why don't you accept payments in Bitcoin anymore, if you are a trader it's certainly easier.
The answer, short of my loss receiving Bitcoin payments in my trades, he said so.
He once sold his trade for $2000 in Bitcoin, At that time, two days before the Bitcoin price fell, the trading price was $1500 in Bitcoin at that time, a long process of waiting for the Bitcoin price to rise.

And something like that happened several times, because of which he concluded that he would no longer accept Bitcoin payments anymore.

There are somethings for small business and merchants to stop acceptance for Bitcoin payment, like transaction fees (but Bitcoin network has been better recent months, so transaction fees became cheaper than years ago), and legal issues.

With time, Bitcoin has better adoption but at the same time there are many governments have tried to pass more laws, regulations and have more strict enforcement on Bitcoin users including business and merchants. If these owners or operators of business and merchants are fearful about possible legal issues, they will stop "Bitcoin accepted here" policy at their business.

[mindrust]

There are somethings for small business and merchants to stop acceptance for Bitcoin payment, like transaction fees (but Bitcoin network has been better recent months, so transaction fees became cheaper than years ago), and legal issues.

With time, Bitcoin has better adoption but at the same time there are many governments have tried to pass more laws, regulations and have more strict enforcement on Bitcoin users including business and merchants. If these owners or operators of business and merchants are fearful about possible legal issues, they will stop "Bitcoin accepted here" policy at their business.

Let's be honest though, it wouldn't make a difference for most of us since I think we all have credit cards... As long as the p2p network works, it is not really concerning if businesses accept bitcoin directly or not. Most of the time it wasn't really convenient anyway. Not for grocery shopping at least (buying a quick coffee, booze etc) It works quite well if you are buying hotel reservations, plane tickets, domains/hosting and other stuff where you can afford to wait a couple hours.

In my country, the government banned it years ago. No company can accept crypto for their products and services. I believe they did that because it would mess the company books to an extent accountants and taxman would go crazy decrypting it.

[Peanutswar]

With the mass adaptation of the businesses and company right now with the bitcoin there is no chance that the other goods and services provider does not accept the use of the bitcoin as a payment method because how convenience it is right now but again this consider in places because there are high end places that widely accepting bitcoin and there are places not yet accepting and introduce with the bitcoin.

And also, you of course wondered that how does the terminal received their bitcoin and then if they will use the payment still on bitcoin or in fiat. You can take this as an example Accept cryptocurrency payments on your website

Base on their website is

But others ive seen is they have the rights if they wanted to partially sell their bitcoin or even hodl, But me if we're the one who have a business accepting bitcoin id rather direct to sell my bitcoin into fiat and make an analysis if its good opportunity to buy.

[Somegory]

That's true for on-chain transactions, but Lightning solves a lot of that. Fast payments and low fees are exactly why many merchants are starting to use it.

Lightning is an idiotic waste of time, which is why almost nobody uses it, even after 10 years. Stablecoins do $trillions in transactions now. That is the future of payments.

Bitcoin is an investment, not a payment method.

Are we talking about the same Bitcoin that I used to purchased the following?

1. BitAxes
2. S21 Asic miners
3. Airgapped hardware wallet
4. Monitor for my PC
5. Paid for cheap games via PlayAsia.

Bitcoin is very much a payment method, but not in your own world and I get that, but all merchants can't be the same, some merchants are bitcoin fans themselves, once they collect. Bitcoin as payment they keep the games on the items they sold in bitcoin and remove main amount to repurchase new goods back to the store, it's an option that works.

[VarJames]

One of our clients recently launched a crypto payment form through a merchant solution we helped integrate.

I expected them to ask only for stablecoins, since that is what most businesses usually prefer. But they specifically requested support for BTC, ETH, and stablecoins from day one.

That surprised me a bit, because in my experience most merchants only ask for USDT or USDC due to lower volatility.

So I think there is still demand for Bitcoin payments, especially for digital products and services where irreversible payments are a real advantage. Many merchants like the fact that there are no chargebacks and no risk of payment disputes after delivery.

In practice, some merchants may still convert BTC to fiat or stablecoins immediately, but they want to give customers the option to pay with Bitcoin.

[m2017]

Bitcoin should really be promoted for acceptance by all mainstream Merchants for the fact that it allows for irreversible payments (when a buyer has downloaded an application or some electronic work, for example).

So how do you envision this bitcoin promotion? Force all sellers to add the option to pay in bitcoins? But, alas, that's not how the free market works.

So, the only reason you see for accepting bitcoin as a payment method is the irreversibility of the payment?

In fact, the main advantage of bitcoin is that in commodity-money relations between seller and buyer, there will be no intermediaries in the form of a regulator, meaning there will be no oversight or unnecessary expenses (taxes). Essentially, bitcoin can be considered the digital money of free people, freed from the yoke of the traditional financial system and the all-controlling regulator.

It will be important for the merchant to do an immediate exchange from BTC to his currency of choice though if he would prefer not to be exposed to the BTC exchange rate.

But then what was the point of using bitcoin at all, if the cash -> bitcoin -> cash scheme involves double (x2) conversion, which means unnecessary losses and unnecessary "movements"? It seems to me that sellers should, on the contrary, keep bitcoin and hold it until they can sell it at a profit; otherwise, why would they do it at all?

[Publictalk792]

It is natural that mainstream merchants are accepting Bitcoin for digital products, since it is huge advantage for online businesses to stop chargeback fraud. Traditional credit card takebacks can wipe out merchant profit margin once an e-book or software has been downloaded, which is huge advantage of un-undoable transactions. But when all transactions are made automatic, which offers real time conversion of bitcoins to cash, it presents its own challenge. If major retail outlet attempts to dump much of BTC into market at once to avoid price swings, then exchange size will not be able to keep up with it. It could cause much of price difference and forced drops in price on exchanges other than smooth change. In meantime, while market becomes much more active, most of risk scared merchants would most likely be happy to let their third party processors take that risk.

[Hewlet]

It will be important for the merchant to do an immediate exchange from BTC to his currency of choice though if he would prefer not to be exposed to the BTC exchange rate.

And someone will dare to ask, what's the essence of buying things with bitcoin only to exchange it back to the person's local currency Imidiatly the transaction has been completed? Isn't that same as taking a long rout in reaching same goal that transacting with fiat will still reach?

Bitcoin is not a substitute to the local currency that's still massively in use till today. It has it place of application same way fiat has it place of application. If you use fiat in the place you're supposed to make use of bitcoin or use bitcoin in the place you're supposed to make use of fiat, it only means you're not effectively hearnesing all that bitcoin releasing.

[legiteum]

Lightning is an idiotic waste of time, which is why almost nobody uses it, even after 10 years. Stablecoins do $trillions in transactions now. That is the future of payments.

Bitcoin is an investment, not a payment method.

Are we talking about the same Bitcoin that I used to purchased the following?

1. BitAxes
2. S21 Asic miners
[...]
Bitcoin is very much a payment method, but not in your own world and I get that, but all merchants can't be the same, some merchants are bitcoin fans themselves, once they collect. Bitcoin as payment they keep the games on the items they sold in bitcoin and remove main amount to repurchase new goods back to the store, it's an option that works.

There's an old saying in computer science, which is, "when your problem is a nail, every tool is a hammer".

Yes, you "can" do payments with Bitcoin, and a lot of people still do. But there are products now that are thousands of times better for this purpose, and the market has made it clear Bitcoin doesn't want to be used that way. If you are a merchant, you are far better off using almost any other digital currency product besides Bitcoin if you have a choice.

And meanwhile, the Bitcoin community doesn't care because they generally view Bitcoin exclusively as an investment, not a payment method. (I've discussed how to make Bitcoin work for payments, but there's simply no serious appetite for that).

As an investment, Bitcoin is doing extremely well, so most people are content to keep things as they are.

[Cryptoprincess101]

Bitcoin is an investment, not a payment method.

No matter how you want to put it, bitcoin is still a payment method even though many people prefer it as an investment and of course, using bitcoin as an investment aided its volatility because imagine if people start using bitcoin to make transactions on daily basis, don't you think that it would be less volatile and lose its holding value. The reason why bitcoin holds so much value is because people are investing in it, if it were to be like stablecoins a lot of people would have dump it long ago. Bitcoin is an alternative to the fiat currency so don't expect it to have same ideology as fiats.

[Alphakilo]

Bitcoin is an investment, not a payment method.

No matter how you want to put it, bitcoin is still a payment method even though many people prefer it as an investment and of course, using bitcoin as an investment aided its volatility because imagine if people start using bitcoin to make transactions on daily basis, don't you think that it would be less volatile and lose its holding value. The reason why bitcoin holds so much value is because people are investing in it, if it were to be like stablecoins a lot of people would have dump it long ago. Bitcoin is an alternative to the fiat currency so don't expect it to have same ideology as fiats.

One of the reasons why Bitcoin remains valuable till date is the fact that it is scarce and more profitable as a long term investment than as stablecoins which could just as well be just like the regular fiat currency we use everyday.
Bitcoin being decentralized has the infrastructure and structure to survive as an independent alternative payment instead of an everyday currency of use which of course devalues it.

[Somegory]

Lightning is an idiotic waste of time, which is why almost nobody uses it, even after 10 years. Stablecoins do $trillions in transactions now. That is the future of payments.

Bitcoin is an investment, not a payment method.

Are we talking about the same Bitcoin that I used to purchased the following?

1. BitAxes
2. S21 Asic miners
[...]
Bitcoin is very much a payment method, but not in your own world and I get that, but all merchants can't be the same, some merchants are bitcoin fans themselves, once they collect. Bitcoin as payment they keep the games on the items they sold in bitcoin and remove main amount to repurchase new goods back to the store, it's an option that works.

There's an old saying in computer science, which is, "when your problem is a nail, every tool is a hammer".

Yes, you "can" do payments with Bitcoin, and a lot of people still do. But there are products now that are thousands of times better for this purpose, and the market has made it clear Bitcoin doesn't want to be used that way. If you are a merchant, you are far better off using almost any other digital currency product besides Bitcoin if you have a choice.

And meanwhile, the Bitcoin community doesn't care because they generally view Bitcoin exclusively as an investment, not a payment method. (I've discussed how to make Bitcoin work for payments, but there's simply no serious appetite for that).

As an investment, Bitcoin is doing extremely well, so most people are content to keep things as they are.

Your Opinion is very welcome friend, I respect that, but we know that everyone has their own favourite thing, its been like 13 years since I used any cards to make purchases online, i haven't been buying anything online for that long until I found Bitcoin and for the type of a person that I am Bitcoin just suits me more than anything.

Also I hardly keep good amount of money in my bank account, unless it's necessary that money flows through bank to another bank account, the reason why I choose Bitcoin has something to do with my personality so yes you are right that there are thousands of others ways but this is me using my own Bitcoin for the purchases.

Bitcoin doesn't want to be used this way is your own opinion, because Bitcoin isn't the one doing the talking, it doesn't force anyone to do what they don't want to do, it's a freedom digital currency, the ball is just in my court and I kicked it anyway that I like, unlike the banks. I mine, spend and hold Bitcoin, it's just all around part of my life, it's my investment, it's also my money.

[Pmalek]

While Bitcoin does this, so does every other digital currency, and stablecoins make a lot more sense for the average merchant. Bitcoin is very slow to transact and extremely expensive compared to a typical credit card transaction.

When you consider the costs, you also have to look at it from the merchant's point of view. It may be true that card payments are cheap or free for the payer swiping their card at the machine, but the merchant pays various fees on their end. Their bank takes a cut, VISA/MasterCard, etc., take a cut, and so does the merchant's card payment processor (whatever the correct term for it is). When you pay a merchant $100 for their goods or services, they may get 1%, 2%, or perhaps 5% less after all third parties take their share. If they aren't operating with a high profit margin, that 5% less in their pockets can be quite significant.

Regarding bitcoin. Bitcoin hasn't been expensive for a long time. Right now, the high priority fee for a quick confirmation is 1 sat/vByte. That's about $0.10-0.12 regardless of the amount you send. Paying $0.10 in fees for a $1 bill is a lot, but paying the same for a much higher amount isn't.

[legiteum]

When you consider the costs, you also have to look at it from the merchant's point of view. It may be true that card payments are cheap or free for the payer swiping their card at the machine, but the merchant pays various fees on their end. Their bank takes a cut, VISA/MasterCard, etc., take a cut, and so does the merchant's card payment processor (whatever the correct term for it is). When you pay a merchant $100 for their goods or services, they may get 1%, 2%, or perhaps 5% less after all third parties take their share. If they aren't operating with a high profit margin, that 5% less in their pockets can be quite significant.

Regarding bitcoin. Bitcoin hasn't been expensive for a long time. Right now, the high priority fee for a quick confirmation is 1 sat/vByte. That's about $0.10-0.12 regardless of the amount you send. Paying $0.10 in fees for a $1 bill is a lot, but paying the same for a much higher amount isn't.

I was comparing Bitcoin to fast stablecoins, not credit cards--although Bitcoin isn't a very good alternative to credit cards either.

But compared to systems actually built for payments at scale, Bitcoin is utterly terrible.

[AmoreJaz]

Bitcoin is an investment, not a payment method.

No matter how you want to put it, bitcoin is still a payment method even though many people prefer it as an investment and of course, using bitcoin as an investment aided its volatility because imagine if people start using bitcoin to make transactions on daily basis, don't you think that it would be less volatile and lose its holding value. The reason why bitcoin holds so much value is because people are investing in it, if it were to be like stablecoins a lot of people would have dump it long ago. Bitcoin is an alternative to the fiat currency so don't expect it to have same ideology as fiats.

Right now, its volatility factor is still the main angle why btc is preferred to be an investment and not more on payment method. Besides, most merchants are charging substantial fees, hence, it is not very practical to use it as payment method. Maybe if the price is already stable, it can be more used as in payment transactions.