Why And How Every Business Owner Should Start Accepting Bitcoin In Their Business
While many online and brick-and-mortar shops and businesses have added Bitcoin to their payment options, it’s still not as widespread as the Bitcoin community would like it to be. Most business owners still prefer traditional payment methods as they simply don’t know enough about Bitcoin and what they’d get out of adding it to their business.
Many don’t trust Bitcoin and its volatility. They’re probably thinking that with such volatile changes in the dollar-bitcoin exchange rates, they would probably end up losing their profits. This fear is understandable, but there have been so many innovations nowadays that this really isn’t a concern at all.
After all, many well-known companies like Microsoft, Overstock, Expedia, Wikipedia, Wordpress.com, Shopify, and so much more, are already accepting Bitcoin payments.
Online And Offline Businesses Can Accept Bitcoin Payments
Just because Bitcoin is a virtual currency that is electronic in nature doesn’t mean that offline shops can’t take advantage of receiving bitcoin payments. For online shops, you can integrate payment processors such as Stripe, Coinbase, Braintree, and more, into your e-commerce site’s checkout page.
Coinbase is one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, if not the largest with over 35 million users across 100 countries worldwide. Coinbase allows you to securely buy, store and sell cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Litecoin, and more.
For offline shops, you can choose from Bitcoin terminals or Point-Of-Sale apps such as Rocapay, Coinify, or Coingate. You can also print out QR codes that your customers can scan with their mobile wallets and easily pay you in bitcoins.
Once your bitcoin wallet is set up, all you have to do is announce to the whole world you’re ready to accept Bitcoin payments!
How To Handle The Volatility Of Bitcoin
The thought of losing your profits and essentially giving away your merchandise for free to your customers is one scary thought as you can quickly go bankrupt if all your customers paid in bitcoin.
At one point in time, it may have been true, but with Bitcoin payment processors like Coinbase and BitPay, it’s now possible to receive your payments in bitcoin and have them instantly converted to US dollars or any other supported currency. This way you avoid all the risks associated with bitcoin and receive the full dollar amount you’re supposed to receive.
To illustrate, if your customer pays you $100 worth of bitcoin for a pair of jeans, then you’re going to receive exactly $100 in your bank account. The payment gateway you use, for example, BitPay, will shield you from bitcoin’s volatility so you always get the full dollar amount.
For the more enterprising business owners who can handle Bitcoin’s unpredictability, the opportunity to make even more profit from the bitcoins they’ve been paid with might be irresistible.
If you belong to this category, you would probably choose to keep your bitcoins in your digital wallets and forego the use of a payment processor who will automatically convert your bitcoins to dollars.
You Can Read More About Accepting Bitcoin In Your Business Or Startup On The Allout Entrepreneurship Blog.