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"Working for bitcoin" How do you incentivize people to pay in bitcoin?
205 sats \ 8 comments \ @CactusHodl 27 Apr 2022 bitcoin freebie
I work in construction and own my own business. We are family owned and over the past nearly 20 years my father has built it himself. It's labor intensive and as he's grown at times he's been forced to accept credit card payments and ACH payments.
Sometimes he has swallowed the pill and lost 3% or more of credit card fees. These are massive losses for transacting and I know some places in the world have far larger fees. A lot of the clients we work for aren't up to speed on what Bitcoin is outside of what they have heard on the news or some are just closed off.
There have been a few instances where people have owned bitcoin but are not willing to part ways with it. I've offered 3% incentives as discounts and up to 5% but have not closed any bitcoin deals. I understand this isn't like exchanging a piece of bubble gum for $1 as these invoices can be a lot larger in work.
Do any of you operate businesses who have come across ideas to incentivize the use of bitcoin? I don't mind losing a small percentage of my labor for bitcoin as I don't see owning something like that as a 3% loss or even if it was slightly more. I value each and every sat that I gain. I would love to hear if any of you have suggestions or how you have worked for bitcoin.
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84 sats \ 1 reply \ @earnbitcoin 28 Apr 2022
You might pay more than 5% above spot to acquire KYC-Free bitcoin.
If acquiring KYC-Free bitcoin is your aim, then offering more than a 5% discount to customers might be the level needed to persuade some of them to begin paying with bitcoin, which achieves two of your goals (1. acquire KYC-free bitcoin, 2. from your customers).
If you have repeat customers, this doesn't need to be an ongoing offer -- just enough to get them to do it once, and they may then decide to offer their goods and services for bitcoin so as to acquire bitcoin which they need (or want) to pay you.
But understand, ... there's a couple of things at play.
  1. Nobody wants to draw from their stack to pay bills. They would rather pay in fiat, and leave their stack.
  2. Nobody wants to buy bitcoin, only to simply turn around and spend that bitcoin (unless, ... the discount for paying in bitcoin is worth the time, expense, and hassle.
But if your customers themselves earn in bitcoin, then they would spend in bitcoin (versus first having to convert that bitcoin into fiat, and then paying in fiat).
So orange pilling your repeat customers themselves is one method to increase the potential supply of customers who would then pay you, in bitcoin.
But there's also Strike's approach. With Strike, your customer is paying you from a USD balance. They don't even need to ever even touch bitcoin. They are simply having Strke send $X amount of dollars to pay your Lightning network invoice. This could be the only thing you are missing, as it becomes simple math:
  • "Pay my $100 invoice with your credit/debit card directly and pay $100.
  • "Pay my $100 invoice with your credit/debit card by using Strike and pay only $97 plus whatever Strike charges (which is ~1%, or $0.97, in this instance).
Strike is not the only exchange/app that does this, but it is the most well suited for this transaction, and I believe they will accommodate businesses (i.e., corporation instead of an individual) as well.
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @samsamskies 28 Apr 2022
Also, someone at Strike just made a bitcoin invoicing app as a hackathon project using the new Strike API. http://paymeinb.tc/
Code is open source, so anyone can fork it and customize it for their own business. https://github.com/verbiricha/invoices
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11 sats \ 0 replies \ @thrown 28 Apr 2022
People not wanting to part with their Bitcoin is an inherent problem imo. People think of it more as a savings account than a currency, and i don’t blame them. If there’s a hard supply cap, just save it.
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3 sats \ 0 replies \ @TheBTCManual 28 Apr 2022
I've been offering 5% off if you pay in bitcoin and 8% off if you pay in LN, card and banking penetration is not as high here in South Africa so people still use cash, but if they can save a bit especially with inflation running away they're finding the incentive to go look at bitcoin. It's still an insignificant portion of my sales, but its a start
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @notgeld 29 Apr 2022
I think you can keep it as an option. People here suggest quite rationally to increase discount because indeed on KYC-free marketplaces like Bisq or similar Bitcoin always costs a bit higher.
It is in the nature of sound money to disincentivize spending but if you have product of great quality i do not see any problems in having more bitcoiners as clients. For many of them it may be actually more convenient to use Bitcoin at some point.
Just do not stop.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Ge 28 Apr 2022
seeing examples online theres people that give like a 20% discount if paid in bitcoin I've even seen in other countries up to 80% off if paid in bitcoin....granted you want to be paid for your good work the people have to understand it is also a money too and to get quality work u pay quality money...I think that the 20% could be a good enough incentive to pay in bitcoin especially if you are able to teach them to use strike... can pay you in dollars you recieve bitcoin they never know they paid you in btc...also with the invoices try using zaprite super easy beautiful design and all you need is an email and a wallet with some sats!
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kilianbuhn 28 Apr 2022
Interesting thoughts. It's the other side of the coin of pricing things in sats.
It's a currency, people should use it!
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @annabelle 28 Apr 2022 freebie
Something like this maybe. It's like a marketing budget.