Bitcoin Wiki - User contributions [en]

How to accept Bitcoin, for small businesses

2011-07-01T18:40:36Z

Warpi: /* Retail businesses */

This guide is intended for small business owners who wish to help promote Bitcoin by accepting it as payment for goods and services. It's written with the assumption that you operate a regular business that sells goods or services for regular national currency such as dollars, and that you wish to accept Bitcoin as another legal way to pay, and that you intend to pay taxes on your Bitcoin income just like any other income.

With Bitcoin being touted as a way to conduct anonymous transactions and as way to compete with government currency, many small business owners wonder what's the right way to accept and account Bitcoin, or if it's legal or ethical, or whether and how they should pay taxes on income received through Bitcoin.

As far as we know, Bitcoin isn't yet formally recognized by governments and authorities as a "currency". But in practice, Bitcoin is likely no different than accepting payment in other forms, such as cash, or gold, or scrip, or gift cards or foreign currency. We think that it is pretty much the same as the local businesses of Great Barrington, Massachusetts choosing to accept their locally-printed [http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/06/19/us-usa-economy-berkshares-idUSN0530157720070619 "Berkshire Bucks"] to support their local economy.

==Starting to accept Bitcoin for transactions==
Accepting Bitcoin at a small business is best started in whichever manner keeps the accounting simple for you. This will vary by the type of business you are operating.

===Start with a sign===
[[{{ns:file}}:WeAcceptBitcoin.png‎]]

If you expect that the number of people interested in using Bitcoin is small, you might simply start by posting a sign or a note: "We Accept Bitcoin", and ask people to contact you directly in order to make a payment. Even if hardly anybody uses Bitcoin as a payment method, you're helping Bitcoin in two ways: one, by increasing awareness, and two, by making your customers more willing to accept Bitcoin as payment from others in the future, because now they know somewhere they can spend it.

===Retail businesses===
Are you a retail business? The easiest way for a customer to make a Bitcoin payment right now is with their mobile phone (for example [[BitPay]]). While applications supporting this are in their infancy and don't exist yet for all platforms, most smartphones can browse the web and initiate Bitcoin transactions from websites like MyBitcoin.com. Since entering a Bitcoin address on a mobile phone is very cumbersome, you might consider setting up a webpage with a short URL that they can go directly to, that makes use of MyBitcoin's shopping cart capabilities.

Many mobile phones with cameras can now scan two-dimensional barcodes called "QR Codes" that encode a web address. This sends the user directly to the web page of your choice. Free utilities on the web can generate these barcodes. By conspicuously posting a QR code for your payment page, you can allow many mobile phone users to skip the step of typing your URL.

===Accounting===
When a customer makes a payment, you might simply issue a credit to their account. Ideally, you want to enter it in a way that suggests you received a payment. You could consider entering it as a "discount", but you may want to consider whether this inappropriately disguises the nature of the transaction. If on the other hand, you're giving "discounts" for Bitcoins, but then you are selling the Bitcoins for currency and then counting that as income, then chances are good that your calculation of income is making up for it. Ask your accountant.

===Businesses that offer gift cards===
If your business sells gift cards or gift certificates, you may find that the easiest way to accept Bitcoin is to accept it only for the purchase of gift cards, and then require the gift cards to be used for actual purchases of goods or services. This way, the accounting practices you already have in place for processing gift cards can be put to use. The accounting for Bitcoins would then be minimized to tracking sales of a single SKU.

This method is also ideal for retail food establishments and convenience stores, where the payment of Bitcoins through a mobile phone for a small daily food purchase might be cumbersome or disruptive, especially in front of a line of other customers. Bitcoins in this case would be best used to reload prepaid cards that can then be swiped at point-of-sale.

If you don't accept gift cards, but you already accept credit cards through a swipe terminal, consider the possibility that you could add a retail gift card system through the swipe terminal you already own. Many point-of-sale terminals, including ones from VeriFone®, are designed around the ability to support multiple applications on the same terminal. Gift cards are also highly profitable because of "breakage", or in other words, the fact that a significant percentage of them never get redeemed.

You could consider adding a private label gift card program from a provider who specializes in this, not just as a jumpstart to accepting Bitcoins, but as an extra boost to income. A private label gift card service provider necessarily have to handle your funds - they can simply provide a solution that keeps track of the balance on the cards on your behalf, including features that allow users to check their balances by phone or by web. Such a solution, of course, is also what makes the cards swipeable through the card reader.

===Businesses that mail invoices===
Does your business send out invoices to customers? Adding one line may make a huge impact for the Bitcoin economy. Perhaps you list it as a payment option just after Visa, MasterCard, and American Express, even if that means your customer must call or e-mail to make a payment.

If you have access to the programming expertise such that you can generate Bitcoin addresses programmatically, consider generating a brand new Bitcoin address for each invoice, and print it on the invoice. When a Bitcoin payment arrives, you'll automatically know where it should arrive.

Customers might wonder how much BTC they should pay in order to satisfy an invoice in full. Your invoice might suggest an amount. For example, if your invoice is for $100 and BTC's are currently worth $1.24 each, your invoice might suggest that it can be paid in full ''"with a payment of 80.65 BTC if paid by (date)"''.

You might be able to anticipate the possibility that even though a Bitcoin address can be printed on an invoice or payment stub, that they are very cumbersome for most people to type, especially being a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters. However, you should probably still do it anyway. The customer is probably going to want some paper trail for his payment. Giving him a pre-printed payment stub with a pre-printed address will satisfy that, because the customer can independently and publicly prove through [[Block Explorer]] that the payment took place.

Does your business have a website? On your invoice, consider allowing them to go to a special URL to get the address to make a Bitcoin payment just by typing in their invoice number. For example, ''ht<nowiki>tps://ww</nowiki>w.yoursite.com/paybtc'' with a form they can enter their invoice number, or just ''ht<nowiki>tps://ww</nowiki>w.yoursite.com/paybtc/60365'' for paying invoice #60365. This way, they can see the Bitcoin address, copy and paste it directly into their Bitcoin client.

Use a brand new address for each invoice whenever possible, and use it only once. This benefits the customer as it removes any ambiguity as to which customer is making which payment and for which invoice.

===Avoiding fraud===

You should also consider the possible risk that fraudsters could send counterfeit invoices to your customers, and entice them to make a payment to a Bitcoin address they control, instead of you. While that isn't likely in general - it depends on how well a fraudster could find out who your customers are in the first place - it would certainly be an unpleasant situation if it ever happened. One way you could control that is, whenever possible, never let people try to type Bitcoin addresses off payment stubs - instead, force people to get the full Bitcoin address from your website via secure SSL. But, still print ''most'' of the address on the payment stub (perhaps with four or five characters starred out), so that the customer's need for a paper trail can be satisfied, so they can prove they paid if there is ever a dispute.

==Paying taxes on Bitcoin income==
[[Tax compliance]] is a topic of concern for small businesses. We aren't accountants or lawyers, and can't give legal or accounting advice.

But in many respects, Bitcoin transactions work very much like cash. Just like Bitcoin, cash is anonymous and doesn't leave a paper trail, yet is widely used in commerce every day.

Ask yourself how you would handle a cash transaction. Do you accept cash transactions? Do you normally pay taxes on cash transactions? The answer for Bitcoin should probably be the same.

As for how to decide what a Bitcoin transaction is worth... the IRS, as far as we know, has never issued a guide mentioning how to value Bitcoin transactions. But they probably have rules and guidelines on how to value transactions made in foreign currency or "cash equivalents". We imagine the accounting would be similar.

With Bitcoins, there's likely to be some difference between the value of BTC when you received them as payment, versus when you go to exchange them for another currency like USD, should you decide to do so. This scenario, likewise, would be no different if you accepted foreign currency or gold as payment. Under some scenarios, it might make sense to book the dollar value of BTC income as it is received, and then to book any difference incurred when it is exchanged for fiat currency. Under others, it might make sense to book the whole thing at the time of exchange.

Perhaps you might talk to your accountant. You don't need to get into a discussion with your accountant about block chains and private keys or the philosophy behind a decentralized currency. By comparing the fundamentals of Bitcoins to accounting concepts already well understood by the public, you can probably get all the answers you need. What would you ask your accountant if you decided that you wanted to accept ''Berkshire Bucks'' or 1-ounce gold coins as payment?

== Help this article ==

This article is a stub, please add to it!

==See Also==

* [[Merchant Howto]]
* [[In-store Transactions]]
* [[Tax compliance]]
* [[Bitcoin PayFlow]] automates the process for accepting bitcoins

[[Category:ECommerce]]
[[Category:Local]]

How to accept Bitcoin, for small businesses

2011-07-01T18:37:12Z

Warpi: /* Start with a sign */

This guide is intended for small business owners who wish to help promote Bitcoin by accepting it as payment for goods and services. It's written with the assumption that you operate a regular business that sells goods or services for regular national currency such as dollars, and that you wish to accept Bitcoin as another legal way to pay, and that you intend to pay taxes on your Bitcoin income just like any other income.

With Bitcoin being touted as a way to conduct anonymous transactions and as way to compete with government currency, many small business owners wonder what's the right way to accept and account Bitcoin, or if it's legal or ethical, or whether and how they should pay taxes on income received through Bitcoin.

As far as we know, Bitcoin isn't yet formally recognized by governments and authorities as a "currency". But in practice, Bitcoin is likely no different than accepting payment in other forms, such as cash, or gold, or scrip, or gift cards or foreign currency. We think that it is pretty much the same as the local businesses of Great Barrington, Massachusetts choosing to accept their locally-printed [http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/06/19/us-usa-economy-berkshares-idUSN0530157720070619 "Berkshire Bucks"] to support their local economy.

==Starting to accept Bitcoin for transactions==
Accepting Bitcoin at a small business is best started in whichever manner keeps the accounting simple for you. This will vary by the type of business you are operating.

===Start with a sign===
[[{{ns:file}}:WeAcceptBitcoin.png‎]]

If you expect that the number of people interested in using Bitcoin is small, you might simply start by posting a sign or a note: "We Accept Bitcoin", and ask people to contact you directly in order to make a payment. Even if hardly anybody uses Bitcoin as a payment method, you're helping Bitcoin in two ways: one, by increasing awareness, and two, by making your customers more willing to accept Bitcoin as payment from others in the future, because now they know somewhere they can spend it.

===Retail businesses===
Are you a retail business? The easiest way for a customer to make a Bitcoin payment right now is with their mobile phone. While applications supporting this are in their infancy and don't exist yet for all platforms, most smartphones can browse the web and initiate Bitcoin transactions from websites like MyBitcoin.com. Since entering a Bitcoin address on a mobile phone is very cumbersome, you might consider setting up a webpage with a short URL that they can go directly to, that makes use of MyBitcoin's shopping cart capabilities.

Many mobile phones with cameras can now scan two-dimensional barcodes called "QR Codes" that encode a web address. This sends the user directly to the web page of your choice. Free utilities on the web can generate these barcodes. By conspicuously posting a QR code for your payment page, you can allow many mobile phone users to skip the step of typing your URL.

===Accounting===
When a customer makes a payment, you might simply issue a credit to their account. Ideally, you want to enter it in a way that suggests you received a payment. You could consider entering it as a "discount", but you may want to consider whether this inappropriately disguises the nature of the transaction. If on the other hand, you're giving "discounts" for Bitcoins, but then you are selling the Bitcoins for currency and then counting that as income, then chances are good that your calculation of income is making up for it. Ask your accountant.

===Businesses that offer gift cards===
If your business sells gift cards or gift certificates, you may find that the easiest way to accept Bitcoin is to accept it only for the purchase of gift cards, and then require the gift cards to be used for actual purchases of goods or services. This way, the accounting practices you already have in place for processing gift cards can be put to use. The accounting for Bitcoins would then be minimized to tracking sales of a single SKU.

This method is also ideal for retail food establishments and convenience stores, where the payment of Bitcoins through a mobile phone for a small daily food purchase might be cumbersome or disruptive, especially in front of a line of other customers. Bitcoins in this case would be best used to reload prepaid cards that can then be swiped at point-of-sale.

If you don't accept gift cards, but you already accept credit cards through a swipe terminal, consider the possibility that you could add a retail gift card system through the swipe terminal you already own. Many point-of-sale terminals, including ones from VeriFone®, are designed around the ability to support multiple applications on the same terminal. Gift cards are also highly profitable because of "breakage", or in other words, the fact that a significant percentage of them never get redeemed.

You could consider adding a private label gift card program from a provider who specializes in this, not just as a jumpstart to accepting Bitcoins, but as an extra boost to income. A private label gift card service provider necessarily have to handle your funds - they can simply provide a solution that keeps track of the balance on the cards on your behalf, including features that allow users to check their balances by phone or by web. Such a solution, of course, is also what makes the cards swipeable through the card reader.

===Businesses that mail invoices===
Does your business send out invoices to customers? Adding one line may make a huge impact for the Bitcoin economy. Perhaps you list it as a payment option just after Visa, MasterCard, and American Express, even if that means your customer must call or e-mail to make a payment.

If you have access to the programming expertise such that you can generate Bitcoin addresses programmatically, consider generating a brand new Bitcoin address for each invoice, and print it on the invoice. When a Bitcoin payment arrives, you'll automatically know where it should arrive.

Customers might wonder how much BTC they should pay in order to satisfy an invoice in full. Your invoice might suggest an amount. For example, if your invoice is for $100 and BTC's are currently worth $1.24 each, your invoice might suggest that it can be paid in full ''"with a payment of 80.65 BTC if paid by (date)"''.

You might be able to anticipate the possibility that even though a Bitcoin address can be printed on an invoice or payment stub, that they are very cumbersome for most people to type, especially being a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters. However, you should probably still do it anyway. The customer is probably going to want some paper trail for his payment. Giving him a pre-printed payment stub with a pre-printed address will satisfy that, because the customer can independently and publicly prove through [[Block Explorer]] that the payment took place.

Does your business have a website? On your invoice, consider allowing them to go to a special URL to get the address to make a Bitcoin payment just by typing in their invoice number. For example, ''ht<nowiki>tps://ww</nowiki>w.yoursite.com/paybtc'' with a form they can enter their invoice number, or just ''ht<nowiki>tps://ww</nowiki>w.yoursite.com/paybtc/60365'' for paying invoice #60365. This way, they can see the Bitcoin address, copy and paste it directly into their Bitcoin client.

Use a brand new address for each invoice whenever possible, and use it only once. This benefits the customer as it removes any ambiguity as to which customer is making which payment and for which invoice.

===Avoiding fraud===

You should also consider the possible risk that fraudsters could send counterfeit invoices to your customers, and entice them to make a payment to a Bitcoin address they control, instead of you. While that isn't likely in general - it depends on how well a fraudster could find out who your customers are in the first place - it would certainly be an unpleasant situation if it ever happened. One way you could control that is, whenever possible, never let people try to type Bitcoin addresses off payment stubs - instead, force people to get the full Bitcoin address from your website via secure SSL. But, still print ''most'' of the address on the payment stub (perhaps with four or five characters starred out), so that the customer's need for a paper trail can be satisfied, so they can prove they paid if there is ever a dispute.

==Paying taxes on Bitcoin income==
[[Tax compliance]] is a topic of concern for small businesses. We aren't accountants or lawyers, and can't give legal or accounting advice.

But in many respects, Bitcoin transactions work very much like cash. Just like Bitcoin, cash is anonymous and doesn't leave a paper trail, yet is widely used in commerce every day.

Ask yourself how you would handle a cash transaction. Do you accept cash transactions? Do you normally pay taxes on cash transactions? The answer for Bitcoin should probably be the same.

As for how to decide what a Bitcoin transaction is worth... the IRS, as far as we know, has never issued a guide mentioning how to value Bitcoin transactions. But they probably have rules and guidelines on how to value transactions made in foreign currency or "cash equivalents". We imagine the accounting would be similar.

With Bitcoins, there's likely to be some difference between the value of BTC when you received them as payment, versus when you go to exchange them for another currency like USD, should you decide to do so. This scenario, likewise, would be no different if you accepted foreign currency or gold as payment. Under some scenarios, it might make sense to book the dollar value of BTC income as it is received, and then to book any difference incurred when it is exchanged for fiat currency. Under others, it might make sense to book the whole thing at the time of exchange.

Perhaps you might talk to your accountant. You don't need to get into a discussion with your accountant about block chains and private keys or the philosophy behind a decentralized currency. By comparing the fundamentals of Bitcoins to accounting concepts already well understood by the public, you can probably get all the answers you need. What would you ask your accountant if you decided that you wanted to accept ''Berkshire Bucks'' or 1-ounce gold coins as payment?

== Help this article ==

This article is a stub, please add to it!

==See Also==

* [[Merchant Howto]]
* [[In-store Transactions]]
* [[Tax compliance]]
* [[Bitcoin PayFlow]] automates the process for accepting bitcoins

[[Category:ECommerce]]
[[Category:Local]]

How to accept Bitcoin, for small businesses

2011-07-01T18:36:46Z

Warpi: /* Start with a sign */

This guide is intended for small business owners who wish to help promote Bitcoin by accepting it as payment for goods and services. It's written with the assumption that you operate a regular business that sells goods or services for regular national currency such as dollars, and that you wish to accept Bitcoin as another legal way to pay, and that you intend to pay taxes on your Bitcoin income just like any other income.

With Bitcoin being touted as a way to conduct anonymous transactions and as way to compete with government currency, many small business owners wonder what's the right way to accept and account Bitcoin, or if it's legal or ethical, or whether and how they should pay taxes on income received through Bitcoin.

As far as we know, Bitcoin isn't yet formally recognized by governments and authorities as a "currency". But in practice, Bitcoin is likely no different than accepting payment in other forms, such as cash, or gold, or scrip, or gift cards or foreign currency. We think that it is pretty much the same as the local businesses of Great Barrington, Massachusetts choosing to accept their locally-printed [http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/06/19/us-usa-economy-berkshares-idUSN0530157720070619 "Berkshire Bucks"] to support their local economy.

==Starting to accept Bitcoin for transactions==
Accepting Bitcoin at a small business is best started in whichever manner keeps the accounting simple for you. This will vary by the type of business you are operating.

===Start with a sign===
If you expect that the number of people interested in using Bitcoin is small, you might simply start by posting a sign or a note: "We Accept Bitcoin", and ask people to contact you directly in order to make a payment. Even if hardly anybody uses Bitcoin as a payment method, you're helping Bitcoin in two ways: one, by increasing awareness, and two, by making your customers more willing to accept Bitcoin as payment from others in the future, because now they know somewhere they can spend it.
[[{{ns:file}}:WeAcceptBitcoin.png‎]]

===Retail businesses===
Are you a retail business? The easiest way for a customer to make a Bitcoin payment right now is with their mobile phone. While applications supporting this are in their infancy and don't exist yet for all platforms, most smartphones can browse the web and initiate Bitcoin transactions from websites like MyBitcoin.com. Since entering a Bitcoin address on a mobile phone is very cumbersome, you might consider setting up a webpage with a short URL that they can go directly to, that makes use of MyBitcoin's shopping cart capabilities.

Many mobile phones with cameras can now scan two-dimensional barcodes called "QR Codes" that encode a web address. This sends the user directly to the web page of your choice. Free utilities on the web can generate these barcodes. By conspicuously posting a QR code for your payment page, you can allow many mobile phone users to skip the step of typing your URL.

===Accounting===
When a customer makes a payment, you might simply issue a credit to their account. Ideally, you want to enter it in a way that suggests you received a payment. You could consider entering it as a "discount", but you may want to consider whether this inappropriately disguises the nature of the transaction. If on the other hand, you're giving "discounts" for Bitcoins, but then you are selling the Bitcoins for currency and then counting that as income, then chances are good that your calculation of income is making up for it. Ask your accountant.

===Businesses that offer gift cards===
If your business sells gift cards or gift certificates, you may find that the easiest way to accept Bitcoin is to accept it only for the purchase of gift cards, and then require the gift cards to be used for actual purchases of goods or services. This way, the accounting practices you already have in place for processing gift cards can be put to use. The accounting for Bitcoins would then be minimized to tracking sales of a single SKU.

This method is also ideal for retail food establishments and convenience stores, where the payment of Bitcoins through a mobile phone for a small daily food purchase might be cumbersome or disruptive, especially in front of a line of other customers. Bitcoins in this case would be best used to reload prepaid cards that can then be swiped at point-of-sale.

If you don't accept gift cards, but you already accept credit cards through a swipe terminal, consider the possibility that you could add a retail gift card system through the swipe terminal you already own. Many point-of-sale terminals, including ones from VeriFone®, are designed around the ability to support multiple applications on the same terminal. Gift cards are also highly profitable because of "breakage", or in other words, the fact that a significant percentage of them never get redeemed.

You could consider adding a private label gift card program from a provider who specializes in this, not just as a jumpstart to accepting Bitcoins, but as an extra boost to income. A private label gift card service provider necessarily have to handle your funds - they can simply provide a solution that keeps track of the balance on the cards on your behalf, including features that allow users to check their balances by phone or by web. Such a solution, of course, is also what makes the cards swipeable through the card reader.

===Businesses that mail invoices===
Does your business send out invoices to customers? Adding one line may make a huge impact for the Bitcoin economy. Perhaps you list it as a payment option just after Visa, MasterCard, and American Express, even if that means your customer must call or e-mail to make a payment.

If you have access to the programming expertise such that you can generate Bitcoin addresses programmatically, consider generating a brand new Bitcoin address for each invoice, and print it on the invoice. When a Bitcoin payment arrives, you'll automatically know where it should arrive.

Customers might wonder how much BTC they should pay in order to satisfy an invoice in full. Your invoice might suggest an amount. For example, if your invoice is for $100 and BTC's are currently worth $1.24 each, your invoice might suggest that it can be paid in full ''"with a payment of 80.65 BTC if paid by (date)"''.

You might be able to anticipate the possibility that even though a Bitcoin address can be printed on an invoice or payment stub, that they are very cumbersome for most people to type, especially being a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters. However, you should probably still do it anyway. The customer is probably going to want some paper trail for his payment. Giving him a pre-printed payment stub with a pre-printed address will satisfy that, because the customer can independently and publicly prove through [[Block Explorer]] that the payment took place.

Does your business have a website? On your invoice, consider allowing them to go to a special URL to get the address to make a Bitcoin payment just by typing in their invoice number. For example, ''ht<nowiki>tps://ww</nowiki>w.yoursite.com/paybtc'' with a form they can enter their invoice number, or just ''ht<nowiki>tps://ww</nowiki>w.yoursite.com/paybtc/60365'' for paying invoice #60365. This way, they can see the Bitcoin address, copy and paste it directly into their Bitcoin client.

Use a brand new address for each invoice whenever possible, and use it only once. This benefits the customer as it removes any ambiguity as to which customer is making which payment and for which invoice.

===Avoiding fraud===

You should also consider the possible risk that fraudsters could send counterfeit invoices to your customers, and entice them to make a payment to a Bitcoin address they control, instead of you. While that isn't likely in general - it depends on how well a fraudster could find out who your customers are in the first place - it would certainly be an unpleasant situation if it ever happened. One way you could control that is, whenever possible, never let people try to type Bitcoin addresses off payment stubs - instead, force people to get the full Bitcoin address from your website via secure SSL. But, still print ''most'' of the address on the payment stub (perhaps with four or five characters starred out), so that the customer's need for a paper trail can be satisfied, so they can prove they paid if there is ever a dispute.

==Paying taxes on Bitcoin income==
[[Tax compliance]] is a topic of concern for small businesses. We aren't accountants or lawyers, and can't give legal or accounting advice.

But in many respects, Bitcoin transactions work very much like cash. Just like Bitcoin, cash is anonymous and doesn't leave a paper trail, yet is widely used in commerce every day.

Ask yourself how you would handle a cash transaction. Do you accept cash transactions? Do you normally pay taxes on cash transactions? The answer for Bitcoin should probably be the same.

As for how to decide what a Bitcoin transaction is worth... the IRS, as far as we know, has never issued a guide mentioning how to value Bitcoin transactions. But they probably have rules and guidelines on how to value transactions made in foreign currency or "cash equivalents". We imagine the accounting would be similar.

With Bitcoins, there's likely to be some difference between the value of BTC when you received them as payment, versus when you go to exchange them for another currency like USD, should you decide to do so. This scenario, likewise, would be no different if you accepted foreign currency or gold as payment. Under some scenarios, it might make sense to book the dollar value of BTC income as it is received, and then to book any difference incurred when it is exchanged for fiat currency. Under others, it might make sense to book the whole thing at the time of exchange.

Perhaps you might talk to your accountant. You don't need to get into a discussion with your accountant about block chains and private keys or the philosophy behind a decentralized currency. By comparing the fundamentals of Bitcoins to accounting concepts already well understood by the public, you can probably get all the answers you need. What would you ask your accountant if you decided that you wanted to accept ''Berkshire Bucks'' or 1-ounce gold coins as payment?

== Help this article ==

This article is a stub, please add to it!

==See Also==

* [[Merchant Howto]]
* [[In-store Transactions]]
* [[Tax compliance]]
* [[Bitcoin PayFlow]] automates the process for accepting bitcoins

[[Category:ECommerce]]
[[Category:Local]]

File:WeAcceptBitcoin.png

2011-07-01T18:35:50Z

Warpi: Grabbed from http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_kgPQJRIac-s/TTcnhpiM6KI/AAAAAAAACVU/74_KDYo3hoo/s1600/weAcceptBitcoin.png

== Summary ==
Grabbed from http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_kgPQJRIac-s/TTcnhpiM6KI/AAAAAAAACVU/74_KDYo3hoo/s1600/weAcceptBitcoin.png
== Licensing ==
{{subst:nld}}

Software

2011-07-01T18:23:08Z

Warpi: /* Bitcoin clients */

List of Bitcoin-related software. See also [[:Category:Software|Category:Software]].

==Bitcoin clients==
Bitcoin clients:
*[[Original Bitcoin client|Bitcoin client]] - standard Bitcoin client, recommended for installation
*[[bitcoind]] - GUI-less version of the standard Bitcoin client, providing [[API reference (JSON-RPC)|JSON-RPC]] interface (see also -server option of the standard client)
Frontends to bitcoind:
*[[BitcoinApp]] - RPC client for iOS devices (iPhone, iPad, iPodTouch)
*[[Bitcoiner]] - Java RPC client (Android)
*[[Bitcoin-js-remote]] - JavaScript RPC client, support for QR codes
*[[Python Bitcoinclient]] - Python RPC client
*[[Spesmilo]] - Python/PySide RPC client
*[[Bitcoin-python]] - Python API
*[[Java Bitcoin Client]] - Java API
Alternative, experimental implementations:
*[[BitDroid]] - Java client
*[[Bitdollar]] - C++/Qt client, unstable beta version
*[[BitCoinJ]] - Java client by Google, early development stage
*[[Freecoin]] - C++ client, supports alternative currencies like [[Beertoken]]
*[[Pycoin]] - Python client
*[[QBitcoin]] - C++/Qt client, unfinished
Frontends to eWallet:
*[[BitPay]] - Android application

==Bitcoin Trade Data==
*[[Bitcoin Charts]] - Html website that has trading data for virtual all the bitcoin markets.
*[[Bitcoinity]] - Html Ajax website that shows a live feed of [[MtGox]], [[TradeHill]], and [[BitMarket]].
*[[MtGoxLive]] - Html website that shows a live fee of [[MtGox]] trade data in an innovative chart form. (Must Use Chrome)

==Bitcoin software==

Web interfaces for merchants:
*[[MyBitcoin]] - Buy Now button to insert on websites
*[[Btceconomy]] - a JavaScript widget listing items for sale
*[[Javascript Bitcoin Converter]] - currency conversion

Web apps (opensource):
*[[Bitcoin Central]] - currency exchange
*[[Bitcoin Poker Room]] - poker site

Browser extensions:
*[[Bitcoin Extension]] - check balance and send bitcoins (Chrome)
*[[Bitcoin Ticker]] - monitoring price (Chrome)
*[[Bitcoin Prices (extension)]] - monitoring price (Firefox)
*[[Bitcoin Tool]] - recognizes Bitcoin addresses on websites (Firefox, Chrome, IE)

PC apps:
*[[BTConvert]] - currency conversion
*[[Sierra Chart MtGox Bridge]] - real-time charting
*[[BitTicker]] - monitoring price (Mac OS X)
*[[ToyTrader]] - a command line trading tool for [[MtGox]]

Mobile apps:
*[[Bitcoin Alert]] - monitoring price (Android)
*[[BitcoinX]] - monitoring price (Android)
*[[BtcMobile]] - monitoring price and mining pool statistics (iPhone/iPad, Android)
*[[Miner Status]] - monitoring miner status (Android)
*[[SMS Bitcoins]] - transactions by SMS
*[[Bitcoin Wallet Balance]] - view your balance in real time on your android phone

Other device apps:
*[[Zen Cart Bitcoin Payment Module]] - a payment module that interacts with bitcoind for the Zen Cart eCommerce shopping chart

Operating systems:
*[[LinuxCoin]] - a lightweight Debian-based OS, with the Bitcoin client and GPU mining software

Mining apps:
*[[Poclbm]] - Python/OpenCL GPU miner ([[Poclbm-gui|GUI]])
*[[Poclbm-mod]] - more efficient version of [[Poclbm]] ([[Poclbm-mod-gui|GUI]])
*[[DiabloMiner]] - Java/OpenCL GPU miner ([[DiabloMiner.app|MAC OS X GUI]])
*[[RPC Miner]] - remote RPC miner ([[RPCminer.app|MAC OS X GUI]])
*[[Phoenix miner]] - miner
*[[Cpu Miner]] - miner
*[[Ufasoft miner]] - miner
*[[Pyminer]] - Python miner, reference implementation
*[[Remote miner]] - mining pool software
*[[Poold]] - mining pool software
*[[Open Source FGPA Bitcoin Miner]] - a miner that makes use of an FPGA Board

Utilities, libraries, and interfaces:
*[[Bitcointools]] - a set of Python tools accessing the transaction database and the wallet
*[[Finance::MtGox]] - a Perl module which interfaces with the Mt. Gox API
*[[BitcoinCrypto]] - a lightweight Bitcoin crypto library for Java/Android
*[[Bitcoin Dissector]] - a wireshark dissector for the bitcoin protocol

Lists of software:
*[[BitGit]] - list of Bitcoin-related opensource projects hosted at Git

Developer resources:
*[[:Category:Developer|Category:Developer]]
*[[:Category:Technical|Category:Technical]]
*[[Original Bitcoin client/API calls list]]
*[[API reference (JSON-RPC)]]

Other:
*[[Namecoin]] - a distributed naming system based on Bitcoin technology
*[[Bitcoin Consultancy]] - an organization providing open source software and Bitcoin-related consulting
*[[Open Transactions]] - a financial crypto and digital cash software library, complementary to Bitcoin
*[[Moneychanger]] - Java-based GUI for [[Open Transactions]]
*[http://btcnames.org/ BTCnames] - a webbased aliasing service which allows to handle unlimited names for your BTC deposit hashes

Instawallet

2011-06-18T20:44:12Z

Warpi: first commit

https://www.instawallet.org/ is a e-wallet.

[[Category:eWallets]]

In-store Transactions

2011-05-16T19:36:26Z

Warpi: /* Paper Bitcoins */

A common question people have about Bitcoin is how it can be used for in-person transactions, like at a supermarket.

Today, Bitcoin is software that runs on your desktop or laptop computer. You can also host your wallet with an online service like MyBitcoin. Neither solution is convenient for the supermarket use case. The most commonly proposed solutions are:

__TOC__

We examine these solutions here.

== Smart cards ==

Today one of the most common ways to pay in supermarkets is with cards you either swipe (magstripe cards) or insert into a reader and enter a PIN (smartcards). It's natural to think of applying the same techniques to Bitcoin, for instance by putting the private keys inside the card.

Unfortunately there is no decentralized way to create such a system. The EMV smartcard framework used throughout Europe today is a combination of standards created by the major card processors that covers not just smartcards but also the readers as well, for instance to try and ensure tamper resistance.

Without central certification of what EMV calls ''payment entry devices'' (PEDs), anyone is free to create a PED that ''looks'' real, and displays the transaction you expect to be paying on screen, but actually sends an entirely different transaction to be signed by the card. The system is only secure when the readers can be trusted. Even if some central authority certifies PEDs, if their tamperproofing fails the certification is worthless. The tamperproofing done by Ingenico and others on their EMV PEDs turned out to be insufficient and has been attacked several times, in one notable incident, readers had GSM taps installed at the factory before distribution.

It's worth noting that the physical smart card form is an accident of history. VISA already offers [http://usa.visa.com/personal/cards/paywave/micro_tag.html keyfobs] that do the same thing but use near-field communication (NFC) technology.

== Paper Bitcoins ==

Another common way to pay at the supermarket is with paper money. There have been various efforts to allow Bitcoins to be printed out and passed around, for instance [http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=3716.0 this one]. The private keys are printed on the paper. But putting private keys on the paper itself simply means anyone who receives the note can take away the underlying Bitcoins backing it.

Solution to this would be to create a paper money where you can see if someone have been using the private key, and a solution to this is found here [http://bitbills.com/ Bitbills]. But even this is secure (or secure enough) only through huge anti-counterfeiting efforts by a large central authority, in the USA this is the Secret Service. The techniques of making paper money hard to forge are not widely available.

== Smart phones ==

The best solution is to use smart phones. Communication can be via unencrypted Bluetooth or using NFC. Near field communications is a form of radio that travels only a few centimeters, so to use it devices must be touched together. In such a setup, you touch your phone to another NFC aware device like another phone, or for the supermarket a simple NFC transmitter. That device sends a Bitcoin address and a requested amount, which is displayed on the devices screen. Confirming the payment causes the phone to create, sign and broadcast the Bitcoin transaction as normal. The supermarkets Bitcoin node will receive the transaction a few seconds later.

To ensure you're paying who you think you're paying, the address can itself be signed with an 'extended validation' certificate as issued by various SSL certificate authorities. The EV standard and auditing process ensures they are only issued to organizations that can prove their identity to a high level of assurance. The phone can then show the organizational name rather than the raw Bitcoin address.

Because you own the device and carry it with you, there's no risk of a corrupt merchant or criminal tampering with the device when you are not around to see it, as has happened with smart card readers. Modern phones can encrypt locally stored data like a wallet such that it can't be extracted unless the right PIN is provided. Whilst physical tamper resistance isn't as strong as with a smartcard, it's probably strong enough to ensure that if a phone is stolen, there is sufficient time to reach a backup and move the coins in it to a new address rendering the stolen wallet worthless.

This solution has another advantage over smart cards - namely that the hardware to do it is being mass manufactured and many people have access to it. This means that in person transactions don't require any complex setup or special hardware. You can pay your friends in the pub as easily as you can pay the supermarket.

==See Also==

* [[Merchant Howto]]

[[Category:Technical]]