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@ mike
2025-02-11 15:59:51
I am seeing a groundswell of interest in adopting Bitcoin in small businesses replacing or augmenting existing merchant services.
This has many advantages for these businesses including:
Attracting Bitcoiners as customers over your competitors.
Allowing a self custody payment system which does not require purchasing equipment, monthly service fees and high transaction fees.
Self custody your money, removing banks and merchant service companies from taking a cut or interfering in the transaction process. i.e. Bitcoin behaves much more like cash in face to face transactions.
Building a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve allowing your profits to accumulate in value over time, just as Bitcoin increases in value due to scarceness and increased adoption.
If any or all of these are interesting to you, then here are a scale of merchant options available to you depending on your needs and interests.
SOLE TRADER
The easiest way for a sole trader to accept Bitcoin is to download the app “Wallet of Satoshi”
https://www.walletofsatoshi.com/
or for regions this is not available, use a web equivalent called COINOS
https://coinos.io/
This gives everything you’ll need, Bitcoin and Lightning receiving addresses, publishable as text or scannable as a QR code. The ability to generate a specific value invoice using Lightning which can be paid face to face or remotely over the Internet and a wallet to hold your Bitcoin balance.
This is a perfect start point, but moving forward it has some drawbacks. It is custodial, meaning that a company actually holds your Bitcoin. Unlike a bank, if that company fails, you loose your Bitcoin.
There is also no direct ability to move that Bitcoin to fiat currencies like USD or GBP, so if you need some of those earnings to pay suppliers in fiat currencies, you will struggle to convert.
If you are an online only retailer, then the industry standard is BTCPay
https://btcpayserver.org/
which can be integrated into most e-commerce systems
TRADITIONAL MERCHANT SERVICES
So the next option is to use a Bitcoin merchant service company. They look very similar to traditional fiat merchant service companies, they can supply infrastructure like PoS terminals and also handle the payments for you, optionally settling balances to your bank in USD or GBP etc…
They charge for the physical devices and their services and they charge a fee on each transaction in the same way traditional merchant service companies do, but usually these fees are significantly smaller.
Companies like MUSQET can help setup your business in this way if you wish.
https://musqet.tech/
CONSULTANCY
The third option is to use a consultancy service like Bridge2Bitcoin
https://bridge2bitcoin.com/
this is a company that will come in, explain the concepts and options and build a service around your needs. The company will build the solution you are looking for and make their money by providing the equipment and optionally running the payment solution for you.
SELF BUILD
If you have experience with Bitcoin and have optionally run your own Lightning node for a while, the tools exist to be able to develop your own solution in-house. And just as Bitcoin allows you to be your own bank, so Lightning allows you to be your own merchant services company.
Solutions like Umbrel
https://umbrel.com/
running Albyhub
https://albyhub.com/
with their POS solution
https://pos.albylabs.com/
are a low cost option you can build yourself. If you require devices like PoS terminals, these can be purchased from companies like
Swiss Bitcoin Pay:
https://swiss-bitcoin-pay.ch/store#!/Bitcoin-Merchant-Kit/p/709060174
as a package or Bitcoinize directly or in volume:
https://bitcoinize.com/
There is also the lower cost option of use software loaded onto your staffs iPhone or Android phone to use as a PoS terminal for your business:
https://swiss-bitcoin-pay.ch/
Swiss Bitcoin Pay can also take the Bitcoin payment and settle a final amount daily or even convert to fiat and deposit in your bank the next day.
HYBRID
MUSQET also offer a PoS system for both Bitcoin and Fiat. They onboard merchants with traditional card services for Visa, Mastercard and Amex with Apple Pay and Google Pay all within the same device where they deploy Bitcoin Lightning as standard:
https://musqet.tech/