Topic: Bitcoin at the Pump, ideas - page 2. (Read 2461 times)

Having worked in the payment processing space for 11 years before shifting to Bitcoin, I can shed some light on this problem.

The petro payments industry is the hardest to break into as it's a small industry where everyone knows everyone. There are less than 10 major petro POS solutions out there and the majority of businesses use the top 2 or 3. Trying to integrate Bitcoin payments into the pump is futile. It's completely outside the conventional process for them. What I mean is, all the payments go through their POS. That means that all the payments reports are generated in the POS system. Adding a payment method that is outside the POS is going to flop. The Bitcoin payments have to be integrated in the POS and nothing needs to change at the pump. Nothing can change at the pump. The reason is that the pumps are so expensive as are any changes or upgrades that occur. Again, we're talking about a small group of pump manufacturers.

The way to break into the petro market is to start with a well funded company. Hire a former payments industry executive who focused on petro and some developers who also understand payments and petro. Design a BIP 70 solution that will integrate into the major petro POS systems. Development costs from those POS manufacturers will be in the $2-$300,000 range and take at least 12 months. This is after the product has been designed and developed.

I've written more about this on my blog here...
http://blog.atlantabitcoin.com/bitcoin-payments-integration-part-2/
sorry for the slow load. effing wordpress...

*Edit: by saying nothing changes at the Pump, I don't mean pay at the pump cannot be accomplished. In fact pay at the pump is necessary to a viable integration strategy. But nothing needs to change (no new hardware or software) at the pump to accomplish that. The POS integration must allow for transactions to be initiated while at the pump but not through the pump.*

There have been unmanned pumps for quite some time.  They are usually reserved for fleet vehicles, but there are some consumer ones out there.  One company (I forget the name, but they are popular in California) have ATM connected pumps that allow you to pay for your gas.  Those could easily be retrofitted with multipurpose ATMs.

What I'd really like is to be able to buy groceries at my local Kroger store with Bitcoin.

As for the gas pumps, there's always a clerk at the cash register. Do the Bitcoin transaction with the clerk.

this can give rise to a new business model: a chain of unmanned gas stations.

Most probable name of a brand: Pump N' Dump of course.  

Sad to me that people don't understand how general economics and risk work.  There is no reason for any company (including Oil and Gas) to hold bitcoins.  They are not in the business of currency speculation.  In fact, they would want to hedge any Bitcoin holdings they may have.  In the real world, they would receive and sell the coins immediately to avoid currency risk.

u gotta remmeber. the more bitcoin gets involved in big business the more corrupt it will get. if oil companies accept bitcoin and just keep it they hold the power the more they get. just like how whales control the price if they decide to sell 10k at a time we all get huge price drops.

That is the last thing we need.... The oil cartels getting involved in bitcoin

May be, i'm afraid. But i don't think, that it is so serrios problem.

You guys need to talk to Andy Shroder

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7p1dyJ0Zy50

Keep one of these off towards the side - like how there is a one off diesel pump or two located within gas stations.

you can already load visa credit cards with bitcoin and it pays from your account. the main issue is that we are looking for too many ways to spend bitcoin with businesses. we need MORE people to spend the bitcoin right now, not more businesses to accept it(that sohuld be later). the demand for people to use bitcoin isn't high enough, we need tens of millions more using it before prices will start to go back up.

Murphy USA has a text/SMS service where the user can text (generating an ACH on their bank account) and they receive a code that can be used at the pump (which are connected to a network).  No reason the ACH couldn't be a Bitcoin transaction, saving the vendor even more money.

Watch hackers immediately fuck with petrol stations when that happens blatchcorn, I'm actually really concerned about how everything is beginning to have an internet connection now.

Let's face it, while there are interesting and creative solutions, the simplest option is for gas/petrol stations to get internet 

I think something like https://coinkite.com/ would be ideal it would be something you could easily implement at a standard gas station that counter but yeah putting it on the machines would be a bit more difficult.

It should just convert how many liters of gas you've removed into it's btc equivalent, of course the problem is you would need an internet connection to keep the price updated. Interesting question anyway lets see if there is someone smarter around

I saw in a recent thread about how it would take forever to get bitcoin to be accepted at the pumps of gas stations due to most pumps not having internet access.  It got me thinking, what if instead of a bitcoin credit card styled solution, there was a QR code at the pump with a wallet address, sending BTC to that QR through your wallet address would notify a server inside the store and turn the pump on for the amount of bitcoin you sent?

What if you wanted to pump until your gas was full, would there be a way for the pump to check the amount available before you pumped, so that it could pull it afterward?