Topic: As a merchant, what percentage do you afford to lose on fees? (Read 345 times)

Even if it is hundreds of transactions you can consolidate them for negligible fee like 3-4 sat/vbyte as of now. Or you can utilize the batch transaction feature from the payment processor which combine the multiple outputs as single transaction but obviously you have to pay the fees for them so considering this still its cheaper compared to paying 1 or 2% as commission for paying fiat payment processors.

Read again please!
I make my retirement stash from this, I'm not using it to buy Bitcoins, I'm gaining Bitcoins from my activity and storing the profits for when I'll be older, I'm not investing my retirement savings in this.


Because it's far easier?
Because my clients don't want to use banks?
Because I can't accept credit cards, because I don't want to be scammed via paypal or other garbage services and because of an idiot to lose thousands in trap funds?
Why the hell do we even have Bitcoin for then?


When I get paid I get paid in a hundred outputs, to spend those to either get fiat to buy more products or pay directly in BTC,  I need to do a tx aslo, and when you have a hundred tx you need to spend in a week since you need the capital it starts to burn.
The ignorance on the original BTC forum on how things work is astonishing, especially coming from users who were supposed to have a decade of experience.


Of course no, I would have closed shop well before of that was the case since I do have money locked in escrows deals, I need sometimes even a week to get those.
But this prolonged high fee period which fortunately ended started to get on my nerves, it was cheeping away my capital with low inputs worth 20-30$ and at the end of it I also had money trapped in altcoins, another headache as I really didn't want to be tied to doge volatility, as doge at the end become the favorite alternative to btc for my customers.
I ended up buying 0.5 BTC just not to spend $400 on a consolidation worth not even that much.

That's essentially what I said. It's not economical to instantly convert any income in bitcoins received from small purchases, but if you can cumulate income from say dozens of small transactions, then paying a transaction fee (even if it's much higher than usual) could become trivial. Especially when the alternative is to not make sales at all.

Are you really serious?

With your money from retirement savings, if I understand a source of your capital correctly, you must use it very carefully. Buying and selling Bitcoin, in other words, trading is very risky practice and its not recommendable.

You are doing a more risky practice, buying and selling stuffs with Bitcoin. Again if I understand your description correctly, you use Bitcoin to buy stuffs like gift card, books, collectibles and resell those items to get profit?

During such trades, you will probably be scammed by your trade partners.

If you have bitcoin, hold it as your retirement asset.

You suggest a waiting game for tackling high transaction costs and network traffic - sit tight, use reserves. It might work occasionally, but high-traffic businesses might face lost revenue, unhappy customers. Also, the cash reserve strategy assumes sizable buffer zones. But think of the little guys, the bootstrapped ventures scraping by? When networks demand a king's ransom, their reserves might run dry! Shouldn't we entertain off-chain or layer-2 options for these David’s among Goliaths?

In cryptocurrency, transaction fee will be depended on transaction size and the fee rate you use for one transaction. Fee rate or gas price will depends on a blockchain network situation to confirm transactions with low or high demands from users. When demand is high, fee rate or gas price would be higher than usual and when demand is low, fee rate or gas price will be lower than usual.

As a business operator, you must avoid to make on-chain transaction when fee rate or gas price is high or very expensive. You must have your business reserve in cash or stable coin to keep your business operations and to proceed transaction, payment for your customers too. If you don't have reserve, you will have to go with on-chain transaction and accept to pay very expensive on-chain transaction fee.

Obviously, but I don't imagine you would need to instantly convert bitcoins received from every single transaction? Especially when we're talking about small-value transactions, as you said the larger ones are not much of an issue. Unless your liquidity is at a very low level, you could just wait with conversion to fiat after at least a few transactions, effectively reducing transaction fee costs.
And if your liquidity is low, just look for a way to build up some cash reserve, that could solve your profitability problems, reduce costs as well as save you some time.

You can just mark up your goods with additional 20% and give that 20% discount to your client who are asking for that extra.  It is just an easy problem.  And if they are whining about fees, why not do the transaction in a centralized exchange taking advantage of internal transfers since they are free.


You can always look for another option for payment.  No one is pointing a knife on you to keep yourself on using BTC.  If it is devastating for your business then look for an alternative and if ever you still wanted to be paid in Bitcoin as mk4 stated, centralized services such as internal transfer on centralized exchange can be a great help.

Aside from the markup that you get to earn as a merchant, on top of that should have the fees that shall be paid. No problem if you increase it a bit and explain it to them but yeah that's a problem for some customers because they might feel that it's no longer worth it when there's a slight increase in the fees. 10%-20% of fee from the profit is quite high but still if you'll see that 80% as a profit, I think that won't hurt you because it's more hurtful to lose a loyal customer, right?

Currently, transaction fees are very cheap, like $0.5 to $1, and it depends on how much your profit is; if you are earning $5 profit, then 10% or even 15% is not too much to pay for transaction fees, but it depends on the business you are doing; if it's a big business, if you encounter a loss in one product, you could use another to cover it up. There are some businesses like mine in which any item you sell is going to earn you up to $50 in profit. If the profit is too small, then it doesn't go below $20, and it doesn't affect my business. At least if you earn $50 profit and decide to cover transaction fee for customers which could be $10 fee, then you still will have $40.

OP actually I didn't understand much of your thread but these days I was thinking about how to convince merchants in my area to accept Bitcoin without going through an intermediary and how not to make them lose even a cent or rather maybe a small profit.  So the challenge is to pay the sales fees to the merchants.  Let me explain if you buy from a CEX you have to pay a percentage that is 3%, 5% or 10% it doesn't matter, you have to pay it anyway.  So if the merchant wants to sell his cashed btc why not pay a small percentage of the sale?  Thus they will be encouraged to accept BTC and a circular economy could be created.

The buyer is the one who will make the transaction to your wallet so if you are a merchant you don't have to pay a penny no matter the network is clogged or not. So the topic itself not exist since the ideology behind the thread is invalid.

I hope the thread will be locked...

In any case, the general rule in trading says that the trader cannot risk paying network fees in excess of his profit margin.
I worked for a long time as a trader, and I was forced many times to stop sales because of high fees or to charge the buyer to pay the fees if he insisted on buying. At the time, Bitcoin and Ethereum were the two major currencies in circulation. While today there are many ways to overcome the crisis of high fees, the most important of which is the Binance platform, which provides free internal sending service, and almost all active users in the field of crypto today have Binance accounts, as well as stable currencies that do not cost fees exceeding $ 1 in the most cases.

I already answered it before, if the client not feel worth it to pay with Bitcoin, he can just use fiat money, why you must force your client to use Bitcoin? you can convert it to Bitcoin by yourself.

Your main problem is you don't want get paid less in Bitcoin and the most make sense answer is demand them to pay more, what's answer you're looking then? you seems already know what the answer is, I believe it's either centralized solution or altcoins based on your thread.

What would you do a a client if I were to ask you for an extra 20% if paying with Bitcoin? Just as every single one of the customers I have they will either ask for a payment in another coin or don't buy, which would end up with me and them stop using Bitcoin, and I doubt that's what anyone here would want to hear as an outcome!


And if the the person seeding it realizes he pays 35$ out of his pocket for 25$ do you think he will stay pay? No they don't!
For the second part, my total turnout is probably twice my holdings, I can't afford to have everything locked in BTC and wait for the fees to come down to 1sat/b, I need to either use those or take a loan, and that is something so crazy I would not think for a second seriously as a solution!


For large deals with mining gear and accessories or anything else I can eat the fees myself, it's 10$ over 10k, for guys that pay for a small hosting deal or a voucher it's a no, we're talking about 5$ -15$ monthly fees and I've haven't been paid by a single one in BTC in the last two months.


I'm dealing only with online payments, so it's either cc or bank if I go that way and I would rather not!


Not much difference in the size of a 10 tx with 1 inputs and one tx with 10 inputs, if I remember correctly it's under a 25% decrease in size.


I still need to use the money I get from a sale to buy more of the products or pay my own bills for the services I provide.
So I need to spend all those tiny inputs and I end up paying the same as the customers has when I need to use the money I earned!

This is exactly why I called Ordinals as it is: a malicious attack on bitcoin.
Weirdly enough some users were claiming that this attack "helps bitcoin adoption and future survival" and yet I don't see any of them in this topic responding to OP's concerns!

As someone who owns a business, receiving payments with Bitcoin directly is an option and when it comes to fees I think it will be borne by the customer directly, not the business owner. In my opinion, business owners should be able to calculate fees + the price that their customers have to pay, that's all. Here, business owners only provide convenience for Bitcoin owners who want to pay using their assets without the hassle of exchanging them or for any other reason, so the fees will be borne by their customers directly. If they object, they can use other payment methods which may be cheaper, no one forces them to pay with Bitcoin, but if they want to pay with Bitcoin they can follow the rules like this.

I think this is a burning issue for many merchants at the moment, because the thing with the "Ordinals" are causing congestion on the Blockchain and this is pushing up the on-chain transaction fees.  

I agree with you that the Lightning Network adoption is slow and more difficult for clients, but that might be your only solution, if you want to accept Bitcoin as a payment option. (Give a little brochure for people who wants to learn how to setup a LN hub)  

0.5% is fine. I can afford 1% if i am desperate. Anything above 1% simply isn’t worth it. I would rather use other cheaper options instead of losing 1% of every purchase. I don’t care how many people use that service, I won’t accept it. If I am selling a good product, people will switch to the alternatives and they will buy my product. They won’t insist on using that expensive payment method. In the end I will be on the winning side as a merchant and that expensive service will hemorrhage users. There are local merchants that only accept cash and don’t do any business with any credit card companies and they make making lots of money. Smart merchants will find a way to come on top.

Struggling with Bitcoin transaction costs? You're in good company—it's a universal issue. Walking the line between profits and client rapport—it's a high-wire act.

Ever thought about SegWit? It curtails transaction heft and fees. Might not be a silver bullet, but it's a pathway. Thinking about alternative coins? That's your play, leader. Bitcoin and blockchain glitter with potential, but they're green. Bitcoin's tenacity and incessant innovation spark faith.

Steering customers towards the Lightning Network? It's an uphill climb due to complexity. But, how about dangling a carrot for its usage