Inspiration: #1495808
After successfully purchasing coffee before Square activated all its POS terminals, I encountered two unsuccessful attempts.
Today with SN trucker hat on I went to a local shop that sells all natural body care products.
A few weeks ago I went to this store for an event and noticed they sold naturally made soap so I wanted to go back and pick up some.
I normally get my soap online from Soap Miner and Born Free since both sites take bitcoin but this month i decided not to buy soap from Born Free and to get soap form this local business.
I walk in, I find my soap and it is time to pay.
Looking at the payment options sign I noticed its a Square store and Cash App is one of the payment options.
The cashier was on the phone talking to some one in Spanish while she rang me up (so much for customer service!! ).
As she showed me the total $14.85 for two soaps I asked is it okay if I pay in bitcoin. She said Bitcoin? I wish I had some Bitcoin but sorry we don’t accept it here!
Normally at this moment I just say “okay” pull out a credit card and pay and move on. But after reading these Square adventures posts I became confident and pushed back.
I told her are you sure? This is a Square terminal they all accept bitcoin. She said okay well I’ll let you try to find the option to pay in bitcoin so she showed me the POS. She then hit the back arrow and looked down the list of options and there it was a line that said pay in bitcoin. She pressed it and boom a QR code showed up that had the Fiat price and the bitcoin price.
I pulled up Alby Go scanned the QR code and it took about 5 seconds to settle. ₿23,862 After I paid the cashier goes wow! How do I know she (The Owner) got paid. I told her to look at the terminal and see that it is marked paid. She said okay then I said great! She handed me the soaps and I left.
As I was leaving I was shaming myself for not showing her how to stack bitcoin. But my onboarding game is so weak!
What should I do pitch Strike?! I couldn’t even get my barber to download Strike. Fold is too busy as an app to stack bitcoin. I need to think of a way to help people get onboarded quickly so they can stack sats? Stackers if you know drop it in the comments and I’ll zap the best method 5k sats!
While Iike Soap Miner and Born Free those companies are not in my neighborhood. From this day forward I will get all of my soap and pay with bitcoin at this shop.
They have a really nice website that shows all their products. If I get an opportunity I will try to speak to the owner about accepting bitcoin via her online store then hopefully let her know that many bitcoiners out there will buy her products because they can pay in bitcoin!
Ew you never bought soap before
hahahah!
It ain't much but it's honest work. Well done!
Bull Wallet (#1258276) has a great custodial option, and then their seed backup option seems intuitive and secure enough for small amounts (#1284991). Seamless sweep tocold storage feature as well. I find it a great way to introduce the concept of self custody.
Americans can’t buy sats from bull wallet
Do you mean the bull bitcoin exchange? I think you can buy off any exchange and send to bull wallet.
Bull's wallet sends you tontheir exchsnge I guess.
I'd assume CashApp and Strike offer similar wallet/exchange UI.
Yeah but for on boarding a curious cashier using Cash App and Strike will take some time to teach them
Fair enough. I don't know how realistic it is to onboard someone in that time frame though. Are there simple solutions? Yes. But you and I know these come with trade offs. If they are interested in bitcoin then they need to humble themselves and start learning. SN is a great place to do that.
If you can hook their interest in Bitcoin, tell them to spin up an SN account and throw out a post in ~bitcoin_beginners saying something like: "hi, I'm new. Help me start stacking real sats." Surely someone here will point them the right way.
Tldr; learning bitcoin = humility + desire + SN
I can’t even get my own family and friends on SN let alone a random stranger but I will keep trying.
Been thinking of doing a meet up too
And advertise SN with local publications here
Same. I just mean learning requires putting in the work and people here can at least help.
If someone isn't interested in learning, then at most you'll be able to get them to download WoS. To me that's not really a win.
The best past of this entire story
MY GOD
She'll likely mention it to the owner. I remember seeing Square let's you keep as many sats as you like via a percentage bar. If you keep going back I'm sure they'll look into it.
Good for you! Persistence pays off! I really hope that the "paying bitcoin IRL" stories become a regular part of SN life. They are so fun! Great job, @BlokchainB!
(also, I think this counts as an entry to the Bitcoin History Month contest)
Square sounds great.
I hope they can come to New Zealand!
Well done to you and Square in pushing past the 'No' and getting to 'Yes we can!'
Don't forget to tell the owner that this literally puts her business on the map.
For someone who says they wish they had some bitcoin, Fold seems like a decent thing to recommend as a place to get started.
I worry the fold app is so busy. They really push the gift card sales thing hard! Plus no p2p access.
I was trying to get my barber to use Strike because he gets an ln address automatically and I can tip him after getting a cut. With fold I gotta ask for his on chain address.
Fold's not the right tool for p2p, but it's an easy thing to replace your current credit/debit cards with for people who are looking for a place to start stacking.
I think they are planning to integrate lightning (again?) and that will be a huge improvement.
Now that they are public and their stock is under $1 they may feel pressured to get revenues up to showcase growth which will hopefully improve their stock price. Thus, I think lightning is far down the development roadmap.
The market thinks this business will go bankrupt.
+1
The desire to stack has to come from within.
It has to be really easy for merchants. Square imo has done a great thing by integrating sats into terminals. I've said it before... But in the future regular people won't know how any of this stuff works, nor will they know on chain exists at all they will know is sats/lightning.
If their online store takes sats for soap let us know thanks for the writeup
I will. I plan on visiting this store at least once a month and hopefully I can run into the owner or maybe ask the staff if I can talk to the owner. And pitch how adding bitcoin to her checkout online can increase customer sales.
It’s a woman owned small business. The city set up a space to allow her to sell her products there as a program to support woman owned small businesses.
I'd love to find a video of the what she clicked (I.e where she went back to, and what the menu looked like) so I could use it to show other square merchants where they might find the same option.
It was one of the smaller POS devices. After she hit the back button on screen it turned to a white background with black text and in between two black lines was a sentence that I think say pay or accept bitcoin with a small black arrow. She pushed that and the QR code came right up