Why Merchants Accept Bitcoin
Updated: January 30, 2018
While Bitcoin has not been able to establish itself as a generally accepted method of payment just yet, support has steadily increased especially among online merchants. Hong Kong especially is still largely a cash-driven society, with Octopus being the only electronic payment system to establish itself outside of the bars and upscale restaurants of Hong Kong island.
But Bitcoin has become widely recognized in certain niches for online payments, such as the sale of gift cards, prepaid value, online gaming, gambling and privacy conscious products such as VPNs.
Why do merchants in Hong Kong accept Bitcoin? We have reached out to Hong Kong online merchants of various industries and asked them why. Here are their enthusiastic or even sobering responses:
Beancurious
Sean: “It just seemed silly not to, it’s a frictionless online payment system that works like cash. Credit cards charge 3%+ and as a startup/small business every cent counts. I wish all of our customers would use bitcoin.” beancurious.com
Wedding Gifts
“As a supplier of gifts to customers worldwide, bitcoin offers lower fees and global reach” weddinggifts.com.hk
Flower Delivery
“In addition to lower fees and no charge back, we gain access to more customers from countries that are currently not supported by our payment processor.” flowerdeliveryhongkong.com
Jack Visuals
Jack: “As we have quite a lot of international customers using our photography services, we would like to provide one more way for them to pay. Bitcoin is great in a sense that it has low transaction cost, safe and fast. We strongly recommend that to other business owners.” jackvisuals.com
Due Maestà
Alessandro: “Bitcoin is a modern evolution of more traditional payment systems that simplify transactions in a secure fashion and lower costs for our business.” duemaesta.com
Abbelio Wines
Mike: “The main reason we accept Bitcoin is to give customers more choice.” abbelio-wines.com.hk
Flavours from Apulia
Antonio: “We wanted to contribute to spreading the use of the virtual currency in different fields of the wholesale and retail market, such as wine selling.” flavoursapulia.com.hk
Cloudion
Luis: “As a technology company, we should be leading the market. Bitcoin is a payment system with optimistic prospect for the near future, as the fee is low and the payment can be made immediately.” cloudion.hk
HKBay
Marc: “Three reasons: (1) no or very low cost, (2) easy to implement on website, (3) safer for merchants than PayPal et al.” HKBay
CK Tax
Michael: “I would like to brand my company with digital elements (I believe tax can be automated) and embrace new technology.” CK Tax
Montmayeur Gemstones
Bob-John: “To be part of the change and changing my industry.” Montmayeur Gemstones
Ronnie English
Ronald: “Just like WordPress, Bitcoin is open source. Everyone can contribute. Bitcoin gives the control of money back to the people, by re-inventing the concept of money.” Ronnie English
UDomain
The Crescent Moon
Garage Society
Check Inn Hong Kong
L&Y Law Office
Pay4Bugs
Larry*: “It’s not actually that great for us, given that it doesn’t allow us to do recurring payments, but for high risk transactions it’s perfect.” pay4bugs.com
Too Free To Fail
Leo*: “Bitcoin is the only method of payment we accept for our SIM cards. In fact, we wouldn’t be able to sell these cards online if it weren’t for Bitcoin, as we can not take care of the risk of charge backs and defaults.” toofreetofail.com
Disclaimer: +larry and *liongrass are both administrators of this website, bitcoinhk.org