Topic: 1 year of accepting crypto payment in my fashion store (Read 731 times)

same thought as i am sure that there would be a lot of buyers or customers not willing to pay in bitcoin due to its high fees… i know i wouldn’t buy a product with even a 5% additional fee plus not to mention it’s not exactly fast to make a transaction

maybe if i were buying something i wouldn’t want anyone to know then i would only be accepting of fees but anyway it has been a couple years since op posted so i guess it’s working somehow

Im curios what dp you do on feees since there are probably huge fees when the network is congested especially your using Electrum as your wallet.

I think you should convert it to fiat immediately because when you go to restock, you will have to pay in your local currency. If you decide to leave the money as Bitcoin then in volatile times like this, you can think of it as an investment. Hopefully Bitcoin will be accepted by many people and its volatility and transaction fees reduce as well so people can actually hold their money in BTC without worrying if their gain has been tampered.

Challenges

The only down side I have experienced is the price volatility of Bitcoin. This has a huge effect on the business, because you need cash to run the business. Do you convert to fiat immediately or do you hodl the crypto payments you receive? If you choose the latter, how do you keep record of your actual profits? For me, I save my money in USD because of the unstableness of the naira. Accepting crypto payments has been of great benefit to me, crypto doesn't have an off-day like the banks do not work on weekends and the network on weekends are usually terrible, crypto payments saves me the bank trouble.

I would like to have customers like you who are willingly to pay for services with Bitcoin. The problem I’m facing with Bitcoin payments is not that customers are ignorant of Bitcoin, it’s the opposite, most of them have heard of Bitcoin and some of them hodl Bitcoin and other cryptos. The problem is getting them to use Bitcoin as payment, Nigerians have a very strong hodl mentality.

I would like to have customers like you who are willingly to pay for services with Bitcoin. The problem I’m facing with Bitcoin payments is not that customers are ignorant of Bitcoin, it’s the opposite, most of them have heard of Bitcoin and some of them hodl Bitcoin and other cryptos. The problem is getting them to use Bitcoin as payment, Nigerians have a very strong hodl mentality.

Bitcoin, as well as crypto is already a globally accepted means of payment for goods and services, it is you the customer who decides to want to pay in bitcoin or any other well known crypto currency.

Some weeks ago, I walked into a restaurant to have launch since I was very far from home, it was a local restaurant since I didn't have so much money on me, and wanted a place where food price will be a bit cheaper.
I told them what I wanted and they served me, after eating and was going to pay, there was no sign in the restaurant that they accepts crypto payments, but I just felt in my spirit to tell them I wanted to pay in bitcoin, I did and amazingly, the cashier with smiles on her face made a bitcoin address and a barcode available to me, I scanned the barcode and sent the amount to them, the only condition was that, I will wait until the transaction gained atleast 2 network confirmation before I leave, I waited and luckily, bitcoin network wasnt congested, 2 network confirmation arrived in less than 20 minutes and I left.

So, what I am saying in essence is that, some business know and are willing to accept crypto payment, but won't let the customers know that such payment option is available, they only oblige to accept it when the customer requests to pay through such means.
So, when next you visit any store, unashamedly ask them if they accept crypto payment, even if there is no crypto or bitcoin accepts sign there.

Price volatility is the risk we should always consider when we are dealing with crypto currency.
It could be good or bad on our business, we could earn more or loss some of our earnings.
We should also consider the transaction fee cost for our customers.
But great job to you OP on having a huge success, it has been a year and you are still keeping it up.

It's a year since I started accepting crypto as payment . I will show you how I operate and also how you can accept crypto payments as a small business owner. I run a fashion store, we make African prints, suits, shirts and trousers. This is a popular business in Nigeria, I needed a edge in the market to better my competitors. A greater percentage of my customers are within the age of 20 - 47, this category are people who are tech savvy and open-minded. Nigeria is one of the biggest markets for Bitcoin. This survey led me to make the decision of accepting Bitcoin payments in my business to serve the increasing number of crypto-paying customers.  I recently made a catalog of Bitcoin wears available for preorders https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.60641685. It's been a one hell of a journey and I would like to share with y'all.
 
How to Get Started

Step 1

Choose a good wallet
Use a wallet you're familiar with. Do not be experimental with wallets, use a highly secured wallet and keep your keys close to your heart.

Step 2

Training my staff

Keeping in mind I can't be everywhere at once, my staff needed to have basic knowledge about crypto. So they can offer assistance to  customers when they need it and also show the newbies how to buy Bitcoin and make payment. Quality customer service is important, you don't want your staff to look confused on the job. That’s poor customer service.  Bitcoin transactions are irreversible, you can't afford to make mistakes.

Step 3

Advertising & Promotions

Getting word out that you now accept crypto payment is important. I rebranded my shopping bags to include crypto images. Also I had a the billboard in front replaced with an new one that says we accept crypto.   Discounts on certain items were given to encourage more customers to use crypto as payment. When a customer buys goods worth more than $100 worth of Bitcoin, they are given a free voucher to shop $10 free.

A typical crypto transaction at my store look like this:

1.The cashier gives the customers a Bitcoin QR code to make payment

2. The QR code is customized to tell customer’s crypto wallet where to send the bitcoins and how much to send.

3. The Bitcoin payment is confirmed by the cashier.

Challenges

The only down side I have experienced is the price volatility of Bitcoin. This has a huge effect on the business, because you need cash to run the business. Do you convert to fiat immediately or do you hodl the crypto payments you receive? If you choose the latter, how do you keep record of your actual profits? For me, I save my money in USD because of the unstableness of the naira. Accepting crypto payments has been of great benefit to me, crypto doesn't have an off-day like the banks do not work on weekends and the network on weekends are usually terrible, crypto payments saves me the bank trouble.

Advice

You don't have to know everything to begin, just start. When I started, I used electrum wallet to receive payments. Then I got to know about lightning network, which I adopted. I have recently become acquainted with a crypto exchange in Nigeria. I'm considering a deal to create a merchant account with them as a payment gateway.

Price volatility is the risk we should always consider when we are dealing with crypto currency.
It could be good or bad on our business, we could earn more or loss some of our earnings.
We should also consider the transaction fee cost for our customers.
But great job to you OP on having a huge success, it has been a year and you are still keeping it up.

~snip~
The only down side I have experienced is the price volatility of Bitcoin. This has a huge effect on the business, because you need cash to run the business. Do you convert to fiat immediately or do you hodl the crypto payments you receive? If you choose the latter, how do you keep record of your actual profits? For me, I save my money in USD because of the unstableness of the naira. Accepting crypto payments has been of great benefit to me, crypto doesn't have an off-day like the banks do not work on weekends and the network on weekends are usually terrible, crypto payments saves me the bank trouble.

Advice

You don't have to know everything to begin, just start. When I started, I used electrum wallet to receive payments. Then I got to know about lightning network, which I adopted. I have recently become acquainted with a crypto exchange in Nigeria. I'm considering a deal to create a merchant account with them as a payment gateway.

That's really amazing. In fact, we can say that you are one of those people who is helping in making crypto adopted globally.
As time goes, we can see that every year there are some people who is promoting the usage of crypto as a payment.
If this keeps growing every year we can surely achieve the milestone of making crypto as a globally accepted payment method.

It's a year since I started accepting crypto as payment . I will show you how I operate and also how you can accept crypto payments as a small business owner. I run a fashion store, we make African prints, suits, shirts and trousers. This is a popular business in Nigeria, I needed a edge in the market to better my competitors. A greater percentage of my customers are within the age of 20 - 47, this category are people who are tech savvy and open-minded. Nigeria is one of the biggest markets for Bitcoin. This survey led me to make the decision of accepting Bitcoin payments in my business to serve the increasing number of crypto-paying customers.  I recently made a catalog of Bitcoin wears available for preorders https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.60641685. It's been a one hell of a journey and I would like to share with y'all. I decided to start accepting payments in crypto after reading “what is eth payment method”, it inspired me and I decided to try it.
 
How to Get Started

Step 1

Choose a good wallet
Use a wallet you're familiar with. Do not be experimental with wallets, use a highly secured wallet and keep your keys close to your heart.

Step 2

Training my staff

Keeping in mind I can't be everywhere at once, my staff needed to have basic knowledge about crypto. So they can offer assistance to  customers when they need it and also show the newbies how to buy Bitcoin and make payment. Quality customer service is important, you don't want your staff to look confused on the job. That’s poor customer service.  Bitcoin transactions are irreversible, you can't afford to make mistakes.

Step 3

Advertising & Promotions

Getting word out that you now accept crypto payment is important. I rebranded my shopping bags to include crypto images. Also I had a the billboard in front replaced with an new one that says we accept crypto.   Discounts on certain items were given to encourage more customers to use crypto as payment. When a customer buys goods worth more than $100 worth of Bitcoin, they are given a free voucher to shop $10 free.

A typical crypto transaction at my store look like this:

1.The cashier gives the customers a Bitcoin QR code to make payment

2. The QR code is customized to tell customer’s crypto wallet where to send the bitcoins and how much to send.

3. The Bitcoin payment is confirmed by the cashier.

Challenges

The only down side I have experienced is the price volatility of Bitcoin. This has a huge effect on the business, because you need cash to run the business. Do you convert to fiat immediately or do you hodl the crypto payments you receive? If you choose the latter, how do you keep record of your actual profits? For me, I save my money in USD because of the unstableness of the naira. Accepting crypto payments has been of great benefit to me, crypto doesn't have an off-day like the banks do not work on weekends and the network on weekends are usually terrible, crypto payments saves me the bank trouble.

Advice

You don't have to know everything to begin, just start. When I started, I used electrum wallet to receive payments. Then I got to know about lightning network, which I adopted. I have recently become acquainted with a crypto exchange in Nigeria. I'm considering a deal to create a merchant account with them as a payment gateway.

.....
Advice

You don't have to know everything to begin, just start. When I started, I used electrum wallet to receive payments. Then I got to know about lightning network, which I adopted. I have recently become acquainted with a crypto exchange in Nigeria. I'm considering a deal to create a merchant account with them as a payment gateway.

Really good to see that you are accepting btc as payment for your store and above that also training staff how to use the wallets and make transactions.Want to ask are there are any stores or shop in your locality doing the same like accepting btc or you are the one? I don't see many accepting it unless you are big store but small merchants also accepting it will surely boost the adoption and awareness about bitcoin globally.Hope you have more customers with you paying in bitcoin.

Many businesses have accounts on exchanges and make customers pay directly to their account. 10 minutes later you can sell it at the exchange and avoid any volatility. Sure, the rate can change by 1%, but that's not a big deal, sometimes it will be 1% up, sometimes 1% down, but in the end, you'll do fine.

Let's say an item cost #5000, and 0.0001 BTC is equivalent to #5000 based on the NGN/BTC exchange rate at that moment, if the customer decides to pay in Bitcoin, you can charge the customer 0.00013 BTC as payment, you will discover that most Bitcoin paying customers won't even ask or notice the extra charge, but if they notice and ask, you can just tell the customer that the extra charge is to cover the exchange and withdrawal fees

Challenges

The only down side I have experienced is the price volatility of Bitcoin. This has a huge effect on the business, because you need cash to run the business. Do you convert to fiat immediately or do you hodl the crypto payments you receive? If you choose the latter, how do you keep record of your actual profits? For me, I save my money in USD because of the unstableness of the naira. Accepting crypto payments has been of great benefit to me, crypto doesn't have an off-day like the banks do not work on weekends and the network on weekends are usually terrible, crypto payments saves me the bank trouble.

It’s not easy to accept of cryptocurrency for the payments.Because the users and the workers should had a good knowledge on the crypto currency.Or else you may not received the payments for your goods.The training of the people with the crypto currency was essential one.Since you had using cryptocurrency as a mode of payments,you will have huge amount of cryptocurrency.Just hold the bitcoin till next halves to get bulk profit.

I would also like to ask a number of questions regarding accounting:
How do you pay taxes on bitcoin you receive for paying for your goods? Of course, if you pay. Bitcoin is not fixed in value, which means that due to volatility it has significant price fluctuations. How do you solve this moment when paying taxes? Do you generally indicate btc in the income item or do you hold btcfor yourself, and on papers in the tax return indicate dollars (or local currency) as income?

I am not a representative of the tax service, but I would just like to know how you solve these issues from a business standpoint.

Given the volatility of Bitcoin, I totally understand that thew op prefers to keep the money for business in the USD instead. Hopefully, high volatility won't always be there, and at some point the risk of not selling for fiat will be lower. I'm also happy to see this story of an inspiring small-business Bitcoin adoption.
My question is about the policies: is accepting Bitcoin as payment legal in Nigeria, and if not, can there actually be troubles with the law enforcement for this? Or is it one of those things which are never enforced, so it's all good?

I was wondering why the confirmation time wasn't a challenge to you. Do you usually accept transactions without fee? What if someone makes a huge transaction, will you accept their payment with zero network confirmation? What about the fees? What if some customers pay very low fee causing longer confirmation time? Do you set the fee for them?

I have noticed that many people is using cryptocurrency as a means of payment in their various companies and department because cryptocurrency is what people is using as means of making intercontinental payment with a speed. I believe that cryptocurrency the more is getting old the more people is using it to make payments for different business establishment. Mate the ideas of bitcoin been used in your store is nice ideas

-snip-
Challenges
The only down side I have experienced is the price volatility of Bitcoin. This has a huge effect on the business, because you need cash to run the business. Do you convert to fiat immediately or do you hodl the crypto payments you receive? If you choose the latter, how do you keep record of your actual profits? For me, I save my money in USD because of the unstableness of the naira. Accepting crypto payments has been of great benefit to me, crypto doesn't have an off-day like the banks do not work on weekends and the network on weekends are usually terrible, crypto payments saves me the bank trouble.
-snip-

What is the average percentage of customers you have that pay with Bitcoin, LN and other cryptocurrencies?
If that number is significant you could convert one part of your coins to fiat currency, but you keep other part in Bitcoin.
This way you could save a lot on fees that could be much higher if you constantly convert BTC to Fiat.
In case if only small percentage of your customers pays with Bitcoin, than I would just hold Bitcoin at least few years before selling.

A store who accepts bitcoin knows what they are doing, it is their responsibility to accept either it will drop or not. As long as they’ve established their mode of payment and accepting bitcoins gives you an opportunity to make a fast transaction. By using bitcoin as payment also gives the store an attraction to the consumers who holds bitcoin because they will think they can save more just by using bitcoin.

It is similar to some Bitcoin ATM transactions, as far as I can see.


I'm curious about this too. I would imagine that because of the volatility the most logical thing to do is to automatically convert to USD or some stable currency. Unless you want to HODL part of your profit automatically, but somehow you have to convert it fast to avoid downside volatility. If it's upside it's not a problem but you never know what's going to happen.

A typical crypto transaction at my store look like this:

1.The cashier gives the customers a Bitcoin QR code to make payment

2. The QR code is customized to tell customer’s crypto wallet where to send the bitcoins and how much to send.

3. The Bitcoin payment is confirmed by the cashier.

He's already thinking of a payment gateway deal with an exchange.

Its great to hear that Bitcoin is used in Nigeria in such an innovative way. I am sure your customer base would keep increasing if you keep advertising your payment options on social media because that is the best communication channel to meet the youths. And advertising on billboards might be very expensive which might affect your profit margin. Nevertheless, I congratulate you for you courage and creative thinking.

.....Do you convert to fiat immediately or do you hodl the crypto payments you receive? If you choose the latter, how do you keep record of your actual profits?

I keep wondering how it is when someone, for example, buys something that costs 100$, that person pays 100$ in bitcoin and hours later the price of bitcoin drops a lot and you get 97$ in bitcoin, then you take the 97$ in bitcoin and will buy the thing for 98$ and then sell it for 100$. in this scenario you are at a loss and how will you deal with this situation for a long time?

And if you accept bitcoin as a payment method, but when people pay and convert in USD right away, I wonder: what would be the point of accepting bitcoin as a payment method in this scenario?

Now that most volatile coins has dumped massively, how do you preserve the value of your coin?

It is always a pleasure to read such positive examples about using bitcoin and crypto currencies. I fully support you in your campaign. Have you had any positive reactions from customers? I didn't see anything about your satisfaction with the response.

Whatever the case may be, this is an outstanding article that will surely get attention. Keep up the good work and I will make sure to share this article with anyone who are interested in following in your footsteps.

I will show you how I operate and also how you can accept crypto payments as a small business owner.

The only down side I have experienced is the price volatility of Bitcoin. This has a huge effect on the business, because you need cash to run the business. Do you convert to fiat immediately or do you hodl the crypto payments you receive? If you choose the latter, how do you keep record of your actual profits? For me, I save my money in USD because of the unstableness of the naira.

Accepting crypto payments has been of great benefit to me, crypto doesn't have an off-day like the banks do not work on weekends and the network on weekends are usually terrible, crypto payments saves me the bank trouble.

The only down side I have experienced is the price volatility of Bitcoin. This has a huge effect on the business, because you need cash to run the business. Do you convert to fiat immediately or do you hodl the crypto payments you receive? If you choose the latter, how do you keep record of your actual profits?