Nostr Web Client

Learned a little more how the legacy credit card system works and got a good bit of motivation to hasten my family's move to a full Bitcoin standard.

We go to the local farmers market every week and we had noticed that sometimes if we went to a shop after our farmers market run, our credit card would decline despite having plenty of available balance. This continued happening and got so bad that our card had become unusable. I eventually got fed up enough that I called the bank to find out what is going on.

Turns out that when we make many payments in quick succession to many different vendors, it triggers the banks fraud detection. So each week we would go to the market and our card would get suspended. Someone from the bank would then need to manually review our txs, see that it is the same farmers market pattern and then restore our card. Apparently due to black friday sales, they have been swamped with fraud detections, so they have been slower at restoring cards, making our card unusable. The bank said that essentially this process is going to happen every time we go to the farmers market. I am honestly shocked at how rudimentary their fraud detection algorithms must be. Surely not too hard to see that the pattern of txs matches the same pattern at the same time, every week.

I had no idea how much manual work was going in to keeping our card working. Obviously Bitcoin fixes this and really reiterates how much of a step improvement Bitcoin is compared to the legacy system.

The only reason we use a credit card over a debit card is that in the case of it getting compromised, then the bank is on the hook for stolen funds, which i my experience makes them much more responsive.

We are going to stop being lazy and just get out cash each week from now on. Much better privacy and better for the merchants. Long term I really want to start getting paid in Bitcoin and then hopefully find some good tools for interacting with the legacy system. Really need to orange pill my local farmers, but that is proving difficult after already trying multiple times.

Reply to this note

Please Login to reply.

Discussion

Alex 2y ago

I tipped my Uber driver last week by having him download phoenix. I'd say it was a pretty good onboarding experience - you can get the sense of it right off the bat. This mempool environment may change the calculus though.

Will be interested to hear your approach at the farmers' market.

Aaron 2y ago

I have tried a few ways to get my local farmers onboarded to Bitcoin.

First I start by just asking if they will accept Bitcoin as payment to get a sense if they are curious or not. Most of them show a vague interest, but they also feel like it is too much to learn or understand. I usually let them know that if they have any questions or need help getting setup that I can help them out with that. After that I try just talking to them about it each time I see them unless they are getting annoyed by it haha.

I then tried printing up those Bitcoin for local community brochures that are open source and added my own little bit of informational insert to it and gave them to all the farmers I had built a relationship with over a year or so. I was hoping that giving them something to read while they have downtime at the market that clearly lays out the benefits to them would spur them to ask for more info. I provided a bit of info about myself and my technical background and gave them some contact info and offered to meet them for a coffee to discuss.

Not one of the merchants has taken me up on that offer unfortunately.

Not sure what it is going to take to move them towards accepting Bitcoin. I think culturally Australians are less amenable to Bitcoin compared to Americans. The depreciation of the AUD may have to get a lot worse before they reach out, but at least they know who to talk to if they do want to learn more.

Aaron 2y ago

Curious how others go about it. I feel like i need a good bit of time with someone to explain the why and the how is an even longer conversation.