How to Get your Store Ready for Bitcoin Black Friday

Bitcoiners are notoriously picky shoppers. I’ve met with merchants who complain no one uses Bitcoin to purchase items on their website, even though the digital store of value is openly accepted in their shop.
This year, Black Friday falls on November 28 and on this date we could see another spike in Bitcoin shopping similar to last year’s event, which was partially responsible for the historic run-up in price due to a surge in people spending their bitcoins on discounted items.
But accepting bitcoins takes more work than simply flipping on your BitPay plugin and for consumers to feel safe using their coin at your shop. First, Bitcoin merchants will need to take into account a couple of important points:
Reputation is King.
If you don’t treat your customers right, people will talk. Robocoin had their reputation (justly or not) ripped apart by a group of very vocal customers who felt their order had been mishandled.
One of the biggest industry shifts caused by Bitcoin is the removal of consumer protections. There are no chargebacks built into the blockchain. Once a consumer sends funds to be an address, it’s final. This is great for merchants who can be confident that they’ve been paid, but for consumers, it means that you need to do extra work validating the merchant you’re shopping at is reputable and reliable.
Merchants who want to provide a shoddy service or ineffective products should go back to credit cards.

This post was published at Coin Telegraph on 2014-11-02.