How to Accept Bitcoin as Payment Mode at my Restaurant?

Bitcoin was launched back in 2009. But recently, bitcoin or the whole cryptocurrency thing has become extremely popular. Everyone is talking about it and looking for ways to use it. Also, the users have a lot of questions related to it. One such question is, how to accept Bitcoin as a payment mode at my restaurant?

Well, accepting payments using Bitcoin is not new. There are lots of online and offline stores that use cryptocurrency to receive payments. But not many are aware of the process. So let me go ahead and guide you with this:

Should your restaurant accept bitcoin payment?

As a restaurant owner, you would hardly find anyone willing to pay their bill using Bitcoin. But since the popularity of cryptocurrency is on the rise, there is no harm in keeping Bitcoin as a payment option.

According to a report, there are 15,174 businesses worldwide that accept bitcoin. But should you be really accepting Bitcoin as payment? Let me answer this straight and forward:

Accepting bitcoin at your restaurant or café indeed has a few benefits. First thing, if you believe in Crypto or are a supporter of it. Then you surely want to see the usage of Bitcoin grow. Also, it will help you to attract like-minded people.

Additionally, it gives your customers more choices for payment. So even if your customers never heard of Bitcoin, they might still appreciate the number of payment methods you have.

Along with that, it also helps you to attract the younger crowd who are into cryptocurrency. Or customers who are tech-savvy. Plus, you get to become one of the coolest restaurants in the town and the early adopters of this very new technology.

However, you would not see any significant financial benefits. But if you do hold your bitcoins, the price rises up, you are surely going to be in profit. 

Additionally, you can earn (monthly) interest on your Bitcoin and other crypto by holding them in crypto interest accounts platforms like Celsius Network, BlockFi and Gemini. All these crypto platforms give interest anywhere between 4 to 8% based on which cryptocurrency you put with them. 

Also, if you deal with merchants that accept Bitcoin as a payment method. Then you can use the currency you are receiving from your customers for your expenses. This would not only help to establish the crypto culture. Plus, you will be able to reduce the transaction charges.

Pros and Cons of Accepting Bitcoin

Pros

Faster Cross Border Transactions:

If your restaurant accepts payments internationally, then you are limited to a few options. Also, most of such options are slow and also expensive. Bank payments can take a few days to be completed.

Even if you consider using online transaction services such as PayPal or Payoneer, then in most countries, they are not available.

On the other hand, Bitcoin is a P2P or peer to peer payment system that allows you to send money to others instantly. Plus, the transaction charges are also very minimal.

Bitcoin As An Investment:

Bitcoin is also a great investment option. You can hold Bitcoin for a long time, and when its value increases, you will enjoy capital gains. Also, these capital gains would be tax free. Also, even if you don’t want to treat it as an investment option, then you can simply convert it to fiat currency pretty easily.

Low Transaction Fee:

Most of the payment methods have huge transaction fees. For instance, PayPal’s frees can be over 4%. Also, there are many payment processors that have setup fees and include a flat fee per transaction in addition to a percentage of the transaction.

However, there are lots of Bitcoin exchanges with fees under 1% per transaction. Also, if the payment happens peer to peer, there is no fee at all.

Cons

Market Volatility:

Since there is no regulation of cryptocurrencies. The crypto market is extremely volatile. In case the value of Bitcoin goes down before you could exchange it with fiat currency. You are definitely going to face a huge loss.

So a friendly piece of advice would be to keep a certain amount of funds as Bitcoin. The rest of the money should be converted to Fiat currency to avoid huge losses.

Security Concerns:

Cryptocurrency is always at the risk of getting hacked. Also, there are lots of cryptocurrency exchanges that have millions of dollars in crypto hacks. However, Bitcoin is pretty secure as a payment method. But the chances of getting hacked are still there.

However, you can use cold storage options to protect your Bitcoins. For instance, you can prefer using a hardware wallet to hold Bitcoins for as long as you want.

Wallet Addresses Are Unrecoverable:

If you lose your owner’s access key to your wallet, then those keys are not recoverable. There is no central record of wallet addresses or cryptographic access keys. As a result, if you lose access to your wallet, you will end up losing all your bitcoins.

How to accept Bitcoin?

Accepting Bitcoin as payment is a pretty straightforward job. Since there are many Bitcoin payment processor services available out there.

Among them, Coinbase Commerce is one of the known names. With the help of Coinbase, you can accept crypto from your customers for all your goods and services.

Also, it allows you to bill and invoice your customers. Plus, you will get transaction reporting tools for accounting and reconciliation.

What’s more? It also has a minimum transaction fee of 1% and offers integrations for Shopify and WooCommerce.

Along with that, it also allows you to accept multiple cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, DAI, Litecoin, Dogecoin, Bitcoin Cash, or USD Coin.

Apart from Coinbase commerce, you can also switch to any other Bitcoin payment processing services. Some of the popular names are: Bitpay, CoinPayments, CoinGate, GoCoin, and many more.

Final Words:

So that was the answer to your question about how to accept Bitcoin as payment mode at my restaurant. I hope this has answered everything you wanted to know. In case you have any other questions, then do comment below.

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