Do the merchants present native lightning invoices and is a companion app required?
Yo nostr:nprofile1qqsvfa085adgecmg84ffelcxx6zrn3ffu5jrc6cjtwng0zge3ptv43cprpmhxue69uhkv6tvw3jhytnwdaehgu3wwa5kuef0qyghwumn8ghj7mn0wd68ytnhd9hx2tcxeljjn I've got an interesting question for you about BTCMap...
Is the intention to display all businesses that accept BTC?
OR
Is the intention to display all businesses where you can spend BTC?
The subtle difference there could open up many more listings. With apps like what we are building with Tando, or similarly Bringin, BitcoinJungle, Mt Pelerin, Opago, Lipa, etc.... we are seeing more tools that let people spend, but the receiver doesn't even know Bitcoin is being used by the payer.
In a few days, we will publicly launch Tando which turns all 100,000+ business in all of Kenya into a biz you can spend bitcoin at. From street vendors to shopping malls, spend sats anywhere, easily.
So the question is, how does that affect BTCMap when the entire country of Kenya is orange for sats spenders?
I imagine most users of BTCmap want to know where they can spend?
Discussion
Merchants don't need to change anything about how they do business today.
At any store in the country I can just key in the bill amount and their 7-digit store ID, I get a lightning invoice to pay. Once I pay, they receive Kenyan shillings. Easy & Fast.
Where do they get their store ID from?
And presumably the customer needs your app.
How does the merchant know they have been paid?
Stores apply for a business account with Safaricom -- the owner of the Mpesa mobile money network in Kenya. Safaricom assigns them a 6-7 digit till number, to which customers can send funds from their own mobile money accounts.
Yes customers would need our app, or eventually the PWA web version.
Our app gets a paid receipt string back from the mpesa service which we display in the app once funds are sent, and on the merchants end they see the same receipt string in their POS terminal. Customers will typically show that string to the cashier who verifies it matches the string (& amount) they were sent from Mpesa, and if they match, transaction is completed.
Pay Bill is another payment type we handle as well. These are typically for things like utilities where the company has their account number, but you as a customer have your own account number with them. Imagine a water utility or ISP that needs to credit your account payment to your balance.
Payment flow is almost identical to Till (ie Buy Goods) except there's one additional field to enter: your customer account number.
And lastly 3rd payment type is P2P, for mobile to mobile transfers. Paying friends, or buying street food etc from individual entrepreneurs/hustlers that don't have their own till number account. Boda-boda (local motorcycle taxi drivers) is a good example of a vendor that use this payment method primarily.
So ya, you can process every transaction type in the country paying with any bitcoin lightning wallet using Tando.
Hmmm, interesting. You seem to fit the criteria of other companion apps, which are listed.
A few hundred thousand locations needs thinking about. If everywhere accepts mpesa then maybe you don't need a map to find them. 👀
Do you know if mpesa locations are tagged on nostr:npub1wxmt2mctrc3626nmfzva7a8uak9dtmmxym7mu9nmgfwxg66tg08qjnpkcy already?
Let me discuss internally about the best way forward.
Hop into our discord to discuss...