Hello Reddit. I am PHP programmer from Russia. I'm here to share a simple idea
which will allow retail market owners in your city to start accepting Bitcoin.
I don't know about your city/country, but in our country
not every salesperson has a smartphone. This article mostly gonna help you to get a clue about solution for retailers to start accepting in your local area
without programming skills and without necessity to purchase an Android phone for their sales employees (in most countries HR-flow for sales people is huge so very often these salespeople are changed too often to trust them such an equipment as Android phone along with other equipment hassles).
The most interesting thing about accepting Bitcoin - salesperson or retail boss
can decide to accept Bitcoins privately, without showing any signs like "Everybody, we're accepting Bitcoins!". Accepting Bitcoins privately doesn't means though that you can't have Internet ads or making the place viral among those who's willing to accept Bitcoin. Acting like this might be especially useful in the countries like Russia or other countries which may not have a legal regulations for currency yet.
Which business is the customer for this idea
Everybody can use it! Mostly
small shops trading different kind of products from A to Z. I believe this idea is powerful for any country. I don't mind using it, I publish this information, because I want Bitcoin to be open to the world. I want to copy this script and build your service upon it.
Technical side
The blockchain.info provides very simple API for checking Bitcoin funds getting accepted. Very soon (maybe on this week) I will publish on my blog about how to write very simple php-script consisting not many lines, easily verifiable for security
vulnerablilities &
ready to use script that will send a confirmation SMS to any old phone, when payment comes (SMS will represent the amount of satoshi received).
Why do I think is it important to provide such a small script for retailer & explain how it work?
Because in this case
you are being honest with a retailer - which is a person who perhaps don't knows you or
sees you first time. Some of retailers may have "php-friends", who
can even show, how this little php works
on fingers. I believe local retailers don't need
another Karpeles with Mt.Gox intermediary which will handle offline transactions for us. Everything retailer will need is:
free php hosting and
oldest & dumbest phone.
If every small retailer in your city will have such little handy php script, it will mean that they will be able to
hire anybody without hassle of trusting Android phone to anybody else to verify transactions in retail market.
How it works for the end-customer?
Customer who are willing to pay Bitcoins for a product, comes to the shop from advertising by friends (or web-site) who said about this shop accepting Bitcoins. Customer is required to have
any smartphone with QR support / Bitcoin Wallets support.
1) Customer came to shopping location, now he is asking salesperson to provide the QR code to scan. You must teach retail owner to print around 6 QR codes (or few more for backup if you think that 6 isn't enough for this shop), in case if there's a need to send more than 1 payments immediately.
Each QR code should be printed on separate papers / cards.
2) Once payment received blockchain will send callback URL to your WebSMS provider (this is shouldn't be a problem, because there's so much SMS API providers, who can have stability in task of rarely sending SMS to 1 phone number). This is gonna be done by those little php-script I will provide in the next blog post.
3) Once customer scans QR code with his iPhone/Android phone and sends his funds to desired wallet,
within a 10 minutes salesperson will receive SMS notification about customer's Bitcoin transaction.
4) Salesperson receives an SMS message saying like "Wallet#2 Received 700000 satoshi" or "Wallet#3 Received 0.007 BTC" depending on the metric system you've chosen in script settings.
Do it today! Now what you need to get started with this idea
I will miss here the part where you find retailer, because it is mostly about convincing someone in person using your sales skills (you can ask direct salespersons who already had experience in direct marketing/communications to guide you about how to contact business owners properly)
- PHP script which must be supported by almost every free or $1 web-hosting provider (by the way you can ask your own web-programmer to write this script for you, it should be very easy task if you'll show him an API documentation https://blockchain.info/api/api_receive)
- You should know your local WebSMS company which must have documented PHP API too (just the way to send URLs with texts). Because you will be needed to guide most retailers in sign up process for WebSMS company (or you can provide account already signed up to your retailer and with a minimum balance at the SMS provider's account provided also by yourself)
- You should provide some education brochures to a retailer which explaining the basics about Bitcoin
- You should teach retailer how to use a Blockchain Wallet (or any other Bitcoin Client, if you think it is easier), and teach him about the best ways to withdraw Bitcoins in your local city.
- Prepare all necessary education brochures, have equipment/know places where to print cards/paper with QR wallets
And finally it will be very good idea for you to create some local catalogue or web-site with links/descriptions where you will collect all of those retail stores, where you have helped to get started with Bitcoins.
Nobody tells you that you must do it for free, you can choose the reward to ask and most people won't hesitate paying for such a useful service. But I'm myself ready to do at least something for FREE to help people gain trust in the cryptocurrencies to finally get Bitcoins accepted everywhere!
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