Accepting Bitcoin as a small business

As self-confessed Bitcoin enthusiasts here at Seymour Locksmiths we value the importance of decentralised ledger technologies. They have the power to change a lot of things, from financial transactions to unlocking your front door (yep, Bitcoin-powered smart locks are a thing).

In 2014 a large school of thought suggested that the main breakthrough use case for Bitcoin would be peer to peer transactions. That being customers and businesses paying for goods and services directly between one another without having to rely on payment networks such as Visa.

We decided to put this theory to the test. In September 2014 we officially started accepting Bitcoin for our locksmith services in Worthing, shortly after we also starting accepting Dash and expanded acceptance to our entire service area. Since that point over four years ago and the time of writing, we have not had one customer ask to pay in Bitcoin, Dash or any other cryptocurrency.

Why does no one want to pay their local locksmith with Bitcoin?

I could list 50 different reasons why but for us it boils down to two main facts. A very small percentage of our customers posses Bitcoin in a hot wallet ready to transfer and secondly, Bitcoin can be slow and expensive for small payments.

It’s not all doom and gloom.

While none of our customers has actually paid a locksmithing invoice with Bitcoin we have had lots of interested people wanting to discuss the subject in depth. Over the years we have noticed a steady uptick in customer awareness of Bitcoin with a huge surge during the bull run and news cycle during mid to late 2017.

Will Seymour Locksmiths keep accepting Bitcoin?

Yes! We are looking forward to trying our new technologies that are being built on top of Bitcoin such as the Lightning Network. We are expecting to see a dramatic improvement in Bitcoin’s ability to serve the small payments markets such as the one of a Shoreham locksmith. We are also looking at adding other cryptocurrencies as payment options, if you have any suggestions we’d love to hear from you. This time we will trial new currencies for our Locksmith services in Hove before introducing it as a payment option to our entire service area.

Should my small business accept Bitcoin?

We think accepting Bitcoin is a positive move for your small business. While you may not get anyone paying in it now, it does come with other added benefits:

1. You are helping spread awareness and understanding of Bitcoin to your local community
2. It can bring traffic to your website. Sites like Cryptowisser have pages dedicated to listing businesses that accept Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies.
3. It shows your customers that you are a forward thinking company.

How does my business accept Bitcoin?

If you’d like us to write a write a blog explaining how to start accepting Bitcoin at your local business please let us know on our Facebook page or by using the contact form on our home page.