Bitcoin For Merchants

The priority is to have a smooth payment experience for the user and 99,99% uptime, so I suggest for real use-cases to try some custodial service and accept bitcoin.

Your options are:

• Hosted BtcpayServer on voltage.cloud
• Breez POS
• coinoswallet POS
• SwissBitcoinPay
• Coincorner Merchant Account(Best option for now)
• OpenNode

You can always withdraw and self-custody your sats on your own wallet afterwards. Losing a sale because your payment system doesn’t work is unprofessional, not to mention a huge waste after working hard to get that customer.

BTCPayServer benefits:

• Free and open source
• Accepts Bitcoin and Lightning
• Customizable.
• Can run on your own server or hosted, your choice.
• Might be too technical and you might require help, but there’s a large amount of guides out there and many people willing to help.

Breez benefits:

• Quick and dirty POS, can run on any phone.
• Has NFC capabilities for Boltcard and NFC chips when on Android. Apple blocks NFC because they require their 30% cut.
• No on-chain on the POS. Can manually accept on-chain with the Receive via BTC address option.
• POS has minor customization so you can add some products..
• Handles channels automatically.
• Says it’s non-custodial but not exactly.

I said it’s custodial because you can’t grab your own keys and Breez corrected me with the following comment:

It’s a Lightning node, not an on-chain wallet. In the dev options you can retrieve all the db files, including the on-chain wallet (wallet.db). Nothing hybrid here, for more information see: https://doc.breez.technology

Breez

I would still call it a hybrid. I understand that lightning has issues and the only way to offer a smooth user experience is to do things like that under the hood. For example, they accept 0-confirmation channel opens so a new user can instantly accept a payment, otherwise they would have to wait for more than 20 minutes I believe. Newbies wouldn’t understand. The point is that I like Breez and it is one the best solutions out there.

Coinos benefits:

• Quick and dirty POS. Can run without install, just a native web app on any phone or tablet.
• Lightning-only
• Has a tipping feature.
• Very easy to use. ‘Start in seconds’ is their motto and it’s true.

Swiss Bitcoin Pay benefits:

• Dead simple to use, just a POS app for Android and iPhone, no customization whatsoever.
• Accepts bitcoin and lightning
• Non-custodial, requires you to set up a BTC address to receive funds.
• Accepts boltcards, and they sell their own user-friendly boltcard on their site.

It’s ridiculously simple to use, just throws you a POS app and that’s it, not even setup options like Breez. It’s non-custodial, the funds go to your own btc address. I think even lightning payments get submarine swapped into on-chain as well.

Coincorner Merchant

Coincorner offers a lot of simple tools to use for merchants, and they’re actively trying to onboard stores in the Isle of Man. That means they’re helping adoption and it’s generally a good idea to support them.

• Bitcoin and Lightning payments.
• Kickass lightning wallet with the best animation ever.
• Boltcard support with an NFC chip.
• Can run on any device that can run an app.
• Separate Merchant Account required, sign up here https://www.coincorner.com/merchantregister
• Here’s a guide.
• The only option of two that currently allows fiat withdrawals after an approval of the company with KYC. The merchant can choose to receive BTC, GBP, or EUR.

Opennode Benefits:

• Accepts bitcoin and lightning
• Integrates with any eshop
• Can send manual invoices etc.
• Can withdraw in fiat currency, e.g. Euro, but it requires a lot of company KYC paperwork.
• API connection.

I use Opennode on my own Mythography shop. I like that it integrates with WooCommerce and it just works.

https://mythographystudios.com/shop/

If you still want to go self-hosted, there are two solutions, the best one is BTCPayServer on your own node, it can simply be a dedicated computer that runs linux and one of the node implementations. And there’s also LnBits Market plugin that now allows you to make a shop, find a guide here https://darthcoin.substack.com/p/lnbits-for-small-merchants

What Would You Gain As a Business From Adopting Bitcoin Payments?

Doing it makes sense for a lot of retailers, but let’s take an example of an independent restaurant/pub that becomes the first to do so in their local community.

What’s to gain?

1. New and loyal customer base from a wider area as Bitcoiners will travel further to spend sats.
2. Bitcoiners will bring non bitcoin friends and family to destinations. Gives massive credibility of the technology and easy 🍊 💊
3. Creating a meet up hub that holds regular events throughout the year ensures block bookings. Important that the local Bitcoin group get creative on this one. Speakers etc for events. 4. Local press attention again fuels potential editorial content for the venue.
4. Now whilst the establishment has costs on produce etc. if they could find a way to save the #Bitcoin spent then it gets very interesting. 30 Bitcoiners per event spending £30 on a dinner and some drinks. £900 per event of Bitcoin. 6 times per year = £5,400 of Bitcoin

Add in the non-organised Bitcoin spending and i think it can comfortably get to £10,000 of Bitcoin income per year done correctly and not over saturating areas with too many venues of the same type so as to dilute the Bitcoin revenues.

Then layer in reasonable price appreciation over the next 4 years and that £10,000 of Bitcoin generated in year 1 is worth £?????? It might well be the simplest and most brilliant stunt an independent retailer can pull off. What’s the cost to it? Zero.

I would however urge the retailer (when confident) to purchase their own POS machine approx £100.

@latelierSW17 for example are going to do initially 6 events per year but also I think we will find that non bitcoin diners will start expressing curiosity which may then open up lunchtime functions for introductions to #Bitcoin with groups who want to find out more information.

The right partnership between a retailer and local Bitcoin advocate could do some really great things in an industry which has had a far from easy time over the last few years.