09 Mar 2014 / Coindesk – Bitcoin has been blowing up the news lately, mostly with bad press stemming from Mt. Gox’s recent collapse.
If you’re a business owner who is considering accepting the digital currency, this may be causing heart palpitations. Despite the temporary market unrest, there are huge opportunities for merchants to benefit from accepting bitcoin – I’ve outlined a few below.
Cost
Credit card fees usually run around 2 to 3%, which can make a considerable dent in the profits of businesses operating on low margins. With bitcoin, you can pay substantially lower fees (~1%) without needing a huge volume of transactions as leverage with the credit card company.
And that’s only if you transfer your money back into local currency – if you keep it in bitcoin, you can essentially avoid fees altogether.
It’s true that as your business scales, you can negotiate lower fees from existing credit-card companies. But let’s be honest: if you’re an entrepreneur, do you really want to spend your time haggling over a fraction of a percent with a rep in a call center on the other side of the planet? Didn’t think so.
There’s nothing quaint about it. You’re trying to build a company, and this isn’t a Moroccan spice market.
If you’re using a service like PayPal, you’re generally being charged a fixed rate of $0.30 per transaction, plus a percentage transaction fee based on volume. Bitcoin enables peer to peer (or individual to merchant) transactions on a very small scale, making micropayments much more viable than they previously had been, and transactions can be completed for less than half of the cost…. Read more
http://www.coindesk.com/isnt-business-accepting-bitcoin/
By: Arianna Simpson (@ariannasimpson) Arianna is a bitcoin enthusiast and investor, who organizes a bitcoin meetup group in New York.
