Author

Topic: The Best Wallet/App for a small Cafe in the UK? (Read 554 times)

sr. member
Activity: 280
Merit: 253
I would install a small USB-powered monitor facing the customer where the QR codes for payments will be displayed for customers to pay when ordering stuff at the register. In this way your friend won't need to be showing her phone to people for them to scan the QR code. The payment addresses will be linked to the Bitcoin wallet safely installed at home. A View-Only Bitcoin wallet will be installed in the cafe where the staff and the owner will be checking the validity of the transactions. This can be done through a web wallet or through a mobile wallet installed on an Android stick for example. If there is a computer already in there it would be ideal.

My 2 cents.
why buy new equipment and make a lot of changes to the place and process? just print the QR-code instead of a monitor. check the balance on your phone. this will do for the first time. you and your customers will figure it out very fast what would be easy and convenient and what works for you. then you can change the system to your needs. if you still want to, because if after one week only 2 customers used the service i would not bother to make big changes. 
legendary
Activity: 2604
Merit: 1036
I would install a small USB-powered monitor facing the customer where the QR codes for payments will be displayed for customers to pay when ordering stuff at the register. In this way your friend won't need to be showing her phone to people for them to scan the QR code. The payment addresses will be linked to the Bitcoin wallet safely installed at home. A View-Only Bitcoin wallet will be installed in the cafe where the staff and the owner will be checking the validity of the transactions. This can be done through a web wallet or through a mobile wallet installed on an Android stick for example. If there is a computer already in there it would be ideal.

My 2 cents.
legendary
Activity: 1274
Merit: 1004
the first thing crossed my mind is definatly not xapo because i hate it .i think about mycelium wallet which is perfect in these case the owmer can have the private keys and the customers will get only a pic of public key to pay and a little bit of java coding can show the transactions done in that address i think even a small html and jquery can solve that
sr. member
Activity: 280
Merit: 253
just keep it simple for the start. it is not like 100s of people will come and wait in line to pay in bitcoin.
generate a simple address at home and print the QR-code a few times out. when someone wants to pay, then show them the QR-code and verify via blockchain.info. make sure to calculate the right amount GBP->BTC and this can be enough as a start.
after a week you still can update to a more sophisticated solution. 
legendary
Activity: 2282
Merit: 1023
The first idea that crossed my mind is Xapo, because I believe both the customers and your friend would like to avoid transfer fee, and Xapo facilitate you with this possibility. It is accessable and applicable from android phone and they also have a vault, so it shall meet some of your requirements. But it didn't have a private key, so yeah, it will be a drawback.

Next, IDK for sure if this works, but will changetip works for her? It enabled us to send and receive btc (and usd) around the amount of a cup of coffee and many people have it, so in case she has to, she won't limit her customer to btc-user only. IDK if they had private key too, though.

Xapo is definitely one of the best candidate for this purpose. So far I have not heard anything bad about it.

Forget about changetip. When you have sufficient amount in the account, it will ban your account saying that you have violated their T&C, eg you have multiple accounts etc etc.
sr. member
Activity: 406
Merit: 250
I use mycelium as my main wallet because I can use it across multiple devices, this could be very useful if you need to accept more than ome payment at once. It is also very easy to import private keys.
legendary
Activity: 3430
Merit: 3071
Does Mycelium still lock users into using their servers to access the Bitcoin network? Not decentralised IMO, if so.
hero member
Activity: 616
Merit: 603
With your requirements you can go ahead with Mycelium for android and can use this at your POS terminal to allow people to pay using Bitcoins. The wallet seed/private keys can be imported and saved by your friend and can be restored at any time so that there's no loss of Bitcoins. You'd also not want to download the entire blockchain and it's pretty easy to use along with a simple interface. But please be aware that the transaction times are subject to the transaction fees and how full the blocks are on the blockchain. You can also try the greenwallet app which is similar and pretty secure.
legendary
Activity: 3430
Merit: 3071
In the future, she may want to run a full Bitcoin node, to help protect against double spend attempts (which are difficult to pull off anyway). That will matter less once Lightning routing becomes available for Bitcoin, which sounds likely to be more suitable for POS needs.
legendary
Activity: 4214
Merit: 4458
firstly the cafe manager should have a proper bitcoin program on her own home computer to move the funds and create the keys on.(the cold wallet) emphasis: safe at home away from work

and then just grab a few public addresses from that cold wallet to then set up on the staffs phones for them to watch for incoming payments.
EG
"on monday the staff will bookmark: blockchain.info/address/?currency=GBP"
remember this is not giving blockchain.info any secret things or requiring signup. it is simply using it to view a live payment update.

this allows changing the address each day or however often the cafe manager wants. to be done easily by just getting waitresses to bookmark the page of the specified address. the page also displays a QR code to make it easy to show customers where to send funds to.

the cafe manager can if she wants to, give each staff member a different public key each. That way the cafe manager can see who served which customer and how much tips that waitress received. or just use one address for everyone

to get the price in bitcoin. say the total was £5. the staff also have bookmarked http://preev.com/btc/gbp
the staff type in £5.05 (1% fee added as a possible thing the cafe manager might want to do. which totals 0.0101btc(at the time of posting))
the staff member tells the customer "it will be 0.0101" whilst simultaneously bringing up the blockchain.info bookmark to show the customer the QR code to pay.

once the customer scans the QR code the staff can see when funds arrive to class the coffee as paid for when they see it arrive. aswell as the security that the staff cannot move the funds. (stops staff theft) due to them only having the public address.

in the evening the cafe manager from the sanctuary of her home, uses their proper bitcoin program on her computer to move it when she wants, however often she wants etc etc.

note:
i just used blockchain/preev as an example of how to separate staff from the funds to give manager piece of mind in regards to privkey security by using watch only feature for the staff.

im sure others will suggest better 'watch only' service/app that includes the payment calculation and address display in one

in short you dont need to have privkeys on a mobile phone to be able to accept bitcoin. you just have to have the public addresses grabbed from the cold wallet. to display only the public addresses on a mobile phone
legendary
Activity: 2030
Merit: 1059
Wait... What?
The first idea that crossed my mind is Xapo, because I believe both the customers and your friend would like to avoid transfer fee, and Xapo facilitate you with this possibility. It is accessable and applicable from android phone and they also have a vault, so it shall meet some of your requirements. But it didn't have a private key, so yeah, it will be a drawback.

Next, IDK for sure if this works, but will changetip works for her? It enabled us to send and receive btc (and usd) around the amount of a cup of coffee and many people have it, so in case she has to, she won't limit her customer to btc-user only. IDK if they had private key too, though.
legendary
Activity: 3430
Merit: 3071
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=100.0

Depends only on actual Bitcoin nodes, so not centralised. Will display wallet balance in GBP.
legendary
Activity: 1932
Merit: 1737
"Common rogue from Russia with a bare ass."
A friend wants to accept Bitcoin in her small UK cafe. She has an Android phone, is non tech but not stupid, and would want to run it solely off that.
Amounts will be small, £5 ish per transaction and she would want to transfer periodically to a cold wallet.
It must be non centralized with private keys private to her.
Recommendations please?
EDIT
I should have made clear that there will be only one point of payment, at the counter when orders are placed with the owner, so no necessity for involvement of any staff in the process. Pure 1P to 1P.
We're thinking simple and easy here, minimalist but obviously secure.








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