Topic: Do Brick and mortar merchants charge a premium to accept bitcoin? (Read 1128 times)

I'd say that they would do the exact opposite. As there are not many companies accepting BTC they can use it to draw customers to them and would gladly offer a discount to draw these extra people in.

Can non-merchant sign up the service? The way Paypal let anyone sign up to sell on eBay.

My coffee shop/ restaurant/ bakery/ gift shop don't know what bitcoin is, and don't accept it. And I doubt I would be willing to give away my bitcoins in such small deals.

Luck the ones that have such option to day-to-day payments.

http://bitcoinmagazine.com/15400/free-unlimited-forever-bitpays-new-pricing-plan/

Maybe from the buyer's point of view. But the seller has the risk of the BTC conversion (to fiat) price moving. The thing to remember is that if only a few consumers/buyers are using BTC the seller may still need to charge a premium to offset the additional expense or risk they incur.

The fee they pay to payment processor can probably offset the credit card processing fee.

A debit card you pay a % plus a fee sometimes up to $1 a swipe (more realistically $0.25)

this guy gets it. merchants can say that they are converting at bitstamp price ($5 higher than btc-e.com) but behind the scenes, what the customer may not know and wont find out is that he is converting at btc-e.com and getting an extra $5 per bitcoin cash-out.

that is the merchants personal choice. basically bitcoiners know that bitcoin can change in value at any moment. So as long as the bitcoin price shown is not exceedingly high compared to the average. then merchants can charge any price inbetween.

also you have to realise that bitcoin customers usually hold bitcoins for a few months, so they are usually in profit due to the deflationary nature of bitcoin. so customers should not be expecting discounts as thats just customer greed. merchants cant often discount prices, simply to hoard for the deflation to make them break even months later. instead they need to buy stock alot sooner, so in many cases of small 'mom and pop' stores they will want to be at break even or profit within a few days.
only large corporate merchants can afford to hoard for profit, thus offer discount. so i truly do hope all you bitcoiners that have the mindset that merchants should offer discounts as standard, to please take 'mom and pop' stores inability to discount into consideration.

No, on the contrary. Sometimes they give a small discount. Makes sense, because unlike any other payment method they have ZERO costs and ZERO chargeback/fraud/counterfeit risk with Bitcoin.

And usually, they pass the ridicilous fees from paypal/bank card/credit card payments on to the customer, whereas they don't charge any for Bitcoin payments. So there's some discount as well.

There is no reason for a shop to charge a premium.
However you do have to figure in the buy sell spread. The shop is obviously going to use a btc to fiat conversation rate based on the sell value as that is the value they will get. You however paid the buy rate. Assuming you used the same exchange (buy sell prices vary widely on different exchanges) and the btc price didn't change you would in fact pay a premium.
Luckily the buy sell spread has tightened up over the last six months.

I don't think so! The merchants accept BTC payment, actually the price on the label is adapted to the real conversion rate fiat/ BTC in the exchange. Once receiving BTC, they dumped right away in the exchange. In the end they actually receive fiat. They lose nothing! They accep BTC payment to attract customers, wouldn't charge premium.

Why the hell would they do that? It's either cheaper or the same price. Nobody is going to pay more.

Does the coffee shop/ restaurant/ bakery/ gift shop etc charge a premium to accept bitcoin when you walk in and buy from them using bitcoin compared to the local fiat price?

If so.. how much in your experience/area?