Quote from: msc on December 16, 2014, 03:29:21 PM

Quote from: zetaray on December 16, 2014, 02:59:09 PM

If I were a merchant, there is no incentive for me to accept bitcoin. Payment gateways charges the same fee as credit card companies

True. Everyone talks about how Bitcoin has no merchant fees, but they have to pay to convert BTC to fiat, pay for development costs or integration with a payment processor, and worry about the exchange rate. With credit cards, fees and chargebacks are known and built into the cost of doing business. With BTC, they're not as well known.

The advantage for Bitcoin is not retail sales. It's person-to-person payments, long distance payments, micro or mass payments, and high risk businesses where credit card fraud is a big problem.

My understanding is the conversion fee is around 1% with processors like Bitpay, and this is where increased competition may help. But this is less than credit card fees. And multinational companies often have to convert fiat from one currency to another anyway, with similar costs and risks.

The cost of integrating BTC exists, yes, but that's true of accepting credit cards, money orders, etc. as well. You say the "cost of doing business" with CC is built in, and that's just the point - why should bitcoin users be paying higher prices that were built in to cover the costs of credit card fees and chargebacks?

I agree with you that long distance payments, remittances, and so forth are also good uses of BTC, but I also think there is huge potential for crypto to supplant credit cards and other payments in general. But before that happens merchants who accept BTC need to look at the results. If the results so far confirm that savings potential of using BTC, then the need to provide incentives to the customer base to switch.

Long term it just does not make sense to me that I would continue paying with CC for most things. But I'll choose the most rational/efficient method of payment from my (customer) perspective. Maybe I'm just being impatient, but I've been waiting all year for the efficiencies of crypto to be reflected in merchant policies.