Steak 'n Shake has reported a 50% savings in payment processing when accepting Bitcoin. Anyone know if Square will be passing similar savings onto their clients who choose to opt in?
Discussion
I think so for the first year 2 years only. Then a 1% fee after that.
Cool. That's a great way to orange-pill merchants into appreciating Bitcoin - hopefully to the point of wanting to pass some or all of those savings onto their customers in order to attract more Bitcoin for themselves. (then, the question will be: does Square make it easy for merchants to choose to do so? e.g. option to automatically provide a 2% discount to the customer for purchases in Bitcoin).
Ultimately, a proper incentive structure should result in all participants benefiting by transacting in Bitcoin rather than fiat.
I don’t think the merchant would pass on the savings to a customer. Mostly because it’s a tiny amount (2%) for the customer but that’s a huge amount across all transactions for the merchant.
So the incentive would already be there for the seller to accept bitcoin like what Steak ‘n Shake has done.
And I believe most Bitcoiners want to support the circular economy more than save 1-2% on a transaction so we are aligned as well.
I think most Bitcoiners would be happy to support a circular economy... but, that's not a very big economy right now. What we need is to convince precoiners that it's in their interest to join that economy. That's not an easy sell to someone who's currently earning 1-2% cashback on their fiat credit - and would instead have to be paying 1-2% or more to CashApp (or whoever) to acquire the Bitcoin in the first place to hand over to the merchant.
PS. If I were a merchant, I would certainly want to pass those savings along in order to attract even more Bitcoin customers.