Many individuals and businesses alike are beginning to realize the power of Bitcoin and Blockchain technology. While some are late to grasp the benefits of the blockchain, others are thriving and making big business moves due to the early choice they’ve made to utilize it. For some, the utilization of the Decentralized Ledger (the blockchain) solves some very basic problems that were once commonplace with traditional payment methods. Below we will outline some reasons it may be beneficial to a variety of business owners.

Bitcoin for Business

My wife does wedding Photography on the side, so I know these stories all to well. Photographers run an emotionally driven business that can go either way. If a person doesn’t like their outfit, their hair, or makeup from a photo-shoot, they want a refund. But what about the photographer? Should they really be out all of that time and money just because of some technical details that fall on the part of their customers? No. Customer Initiated charge-backs are especially a problem in the wedding photography industry. Instead of customers going through the proper channels for a dispute, some customers will just initiate a chargeback from their Bank. This leaves you with fees, unpaid, and a legal mess if you hope to see payment for a job completed.

When receiving payment by Bitcoin, there is a full, transparent, uneditable ledger of the transaction for proof of sale, available for anyone to view, but all sales are final. Once an order is placed, the funds can not be removed by any third party that does not have full access to your private wallet.

I have heard several other stories about photographers who provided service and were paid via PayPal, once the work was done, and the images were delivered, the customer for one reason or another decided to dispute the charges and request that the funds be sent back to their account. PayPal almost always sides with the customer and so in those cases, the photographer was out the money, their time, and any additional funds they had spent to make the magic happen.

These kinds of stories make me feel really bad, but most recently I read a thread asking wedding photographers if they would ever accept Bitcoin as a payment method. 90% of the comments were from under-educated people who had no idea what Bitcoin was. Their theory (what they had gathered from the mainstream media) was that Bitcoin was a scam, which was good for nothing. I had to laugh a little because there was only one comment that illustrated the fact; The current demographics for Bitcoin users are often seen as hipsters, financially smart people, with a little extra money to throw around, is that not the target market for nearly any business? They were right on the money with that answer, something I had hoped to see, but many who responded to the question where clueless.

I know that several online casinos now accept Bitcoin for both deposits and withdrawals, as charge-backs where a huge issue in that industry also, as I am sure they are in most of the entertainment industry. Customers would make a deposit at an online casino using their favorite credit card, and if they won everything was great. The customer would then wait to receive their winnings and everything would be good. But if they lost, some customers would then initiate a charge-back via their bank claiming they did not know about the deposit, or their card was stolen. This would cost the casino large amounts of money, as they had to cover these huge losses, while still paying out winnings from other players.

Now you will find that most online casinos also accept Bitcoin alongside credit cards to help minimize their losses. But this often works in the players' favor as well, because all transactions with bitcoin are nearly instant, and this includes receiving your winnings. Before when a player would win, they would have to wait days, to weeks for the casino to send out a bank wire or paper check. Now when depositing by Bitcoin, these same casinos can instantly send out player winnings, and this is all done with almost zero fees. 

As we can see, Bitcoin is good for all kinds of business owners but as we all know, it can take some pushing or shoving to teach an old dog new tricks, and that can be said about those who work in almost any industry. Here is a list of some of the reasons why Bitcoin is good for business;

All sales are final - FINAL. That means that you can rest assured that you will never wake up one day to an emptied account because one of your clients decided that you didn’t deserve the money that was paid to you, that the contract meant nothing, and that your time was a waste.

I know what some of you are thinking, “the customer is always right” but in today’s world where there are more entitled people, not caring about the people they’re hurting with their requests for refunds unjustly, using a blockchain-based payment source gives you the power to level with your customer and talk to them about the issue at hand, and rectify it instead of having the funds pulled right out from underneath you.

Below are just a few additional reasons a business owner may wish to accept Bitcoin:

• Zero banking fees - banking fees were another part of doing business where up until now.

• Processing fees - processing fees take a portion of your earnings and these can really add up over time. To process a transaction over Bitcoin, for example, the fee is a fraction of that of traditional options, often less than a few cents.

• Instant payments - your payment can be made at any time, no waiting for the bank to open to withdraw cash, and you won’t need to wait for the money to clear, it is all handled instantly any time of the day, night, weekend or holiday.