Are you a bitcoin enthusiast who also has their own business, and / or charge people for your products and services? As an entrepreneur and bitcoin user, allowing customers the additional payment option of bitcoin when making payment is a great way to acquire bitcoin.
HODL Merchant vs a Pass though Merchant
A pass through merchant is one that accepts bitcoin for payment, but converts it to Rand immediately. A HODL merchant accepts bitcoin but does not convert it. In South Africa most websites that accept bitcoin for payment are pass through merchants using PayFast to process the bitcoin transaction. PayFast will convert it to Rand immediately for a 1.9% fee per transaction. If you are trying to keep your bitcoin that is paid to you, then you need to become a HODL merchant instead.
Being a HODL merchant means that you accept bitcoin for payment but you keep it instead of converting it to fiat, this enables accumulating bitcoin without having to buy it directly.
Benefits to accepting bitcoin as a method of payment:
- You get bitcoin – Instead of buying bitcoin, the best way to acquire bitcoin, is to be paid in bitcoin.
- Fast transactions – Full and final settlement of funds in an average of 30 minutes as opposed to daily settlement with other payment methods.
- Its more secure for the merchant – Transactions cannot be reversed, so retailers need not worry about credit card charge-backs.
- It costs you nothing to accept a payment – You do not need to pay 3-5% per transaction (excl VAT) to the bank like with a credit card, snap scan or other bank payment methods.
- Your funds are secure – Your account and funds can never be seized, frozen or closed, you are the only one with control.
- Exposure to wider audience – As a merchant that accepts bitcoin, you are exposed to a large global customer base of bitcoin users who prefer to spend bitcoin over government money.
- Transparency of transactions – Ever aspect of each transaction is publicly available on the blockchain.
- Customer security – You as the merchant never hold any sensitive information that could result in a customer losing funds from a hack or data breach.
Earn bitcoin by accepting bitcoin as a method of payment on your website. When you use an exchange to buy bitcoin, you often have to pay a trading fee, and then withdrawal fees to send the bitcoin you have bought to your secure wallet. By accepting bitcoin directly, you bypass this process.
By accepting bitcoin on your website as a HODL merchant, you don’t pay any fees, and the bitcoin is transferred directly to your secure wallet with no middle man taking a percentage along the way.
Payment direct to your secure wallet
When you accept bitcoin on your website, the payment can go directly to your own secure hardware wallet such as a Trezor, or Ledger.
Accepting bitcoin on your website:
The most popular website system for small businesses in South Africa is WordPress, and there are plenty of plugins available that will allow a business to accept a bitcoin payment directly to their wallet.
We run our own instance of BTCPay Server, which allows us to process payments ourselves, and we offer that as a free service to anyone who would like to accept bitcoin on their WordPress website using WooCommerce.
To qualify, website owners just need to have their own secure wallet (Trezor / Ledger / Electrum etc) and provide us with the xpub key. This will NOT work with a custodial wallet from a cryptocurrency exchange, as they do not provide you with your key.
Your own website will generate the invoices for payment to addresses from your own secure wallet, and our BTCPay server will process the payment for you at no charge.
Pay / Donate button for your website
We are also able to create a pay or donate button for your website, where customers will be able to pay you bitcoin direct to your secure wallet using the button we create. Here is an example of the button:
If you would like to take advantage of our offer please email [email protected] to arrange it.
