Firstly wouldn't this be an issue for BTC to ever be mainstream if you can't pay for things immediately in shops etc?
No. Creditcards take 6-12 months for their first confirmation, I dont see anyone complaining about that or any customers camping 6 months because they paid for a coffee with a CC.
Thanks - you've done a great job of answering.
The only thing with the above is whilst credit cards may take that long to confirm I think the CC companies guarantee the transaction don't they?
Not always. E.g. digital items are not covered. If you buy something with a stolen CC on steam you might get your account suspended, but steam will never see the money even though you got the digital items (e.g. CS:GO weapon skin).
So in effect when you're paying for your coffee, as far as you're concerned the transaction is immediate.
Yes, but not for the shop owner. They just take the risk because the loss due to stolen CC is lower than the loss of people unable to pay because they have no cash with them. Sometimes the shop can have the CC company pay and they also just take the loss, because its covered by their fees. Essentially Credit Cards make coffee more expensive for everyone even for those that pay with cash, because the shop owner does a mixed calculation on the price. Thus all the fees and losses are paid by all customers. With BTC the customer would have to pay the fee and thus cash payment would essentially be cheaper because it works without a fee.
Where as if paying with BTC the company selling the coffee would have to bear the cost of an unconfirmed transaction going bad (just an example with the coffee of course).
The good things with BTC transactions is that you can counter scam (double spend) attempts. A CC is always legit whether its used by the owner or a scammer. There is nothing you can do about it, you cant detect a stolen CC until its reported as such. Most of the time its not even the physical card thats stolen, but just the information on it.
Like they'd see the transaction quite quickly but it might not do a single confirmation for sometime after.
Thanks!
Again, there is always a risk involved when accepting any form of payment. Someone that owns a shop is aware of that and its reflected in the price. IMHO wide acceptance of bitcoin would lower the potential to scam and thus lower prices (or result in higher profits)
