E-commerce is a tricky bitch, but if you can manage to understand the psychology of selling a product online and you learn the skills to allow for a seamless transaction, then you're in for a career that you own and control.
A few days ago, I told the community about my progress i accepting Bitcoin on my apparel store. We're getting around 50-60k impressions every month, a lot of eyes and transactions around a small operation like ours. Nevertheless, the mere fact that we're accepting Bitcoin as a payment option goes to show the possibility of driving this mainstream. Let me elaborate:
Shopify just announced that they crossed 1 million merchants on the platform. Bitcoin is being offered as a NATIVE checkout option via Coinbase Commerce. However, this is where things fall apart. Here's why:
- Few people want to spend their Bitcoin
- Those that do want to spend it and believe in its future as a currency don't trust Coinbase
So, I got to work. I did my research and realized that language around Lightning always involves speedy transactions without intermediaries. This implies that the community that revolves around lightning is slightly different and actually prefers to spend their Bitcoin in support of the idea of Bitcoin as a currency. Whether they spend and buy again is a whole other issue.
With this in mind, and based off a recommendation by u/bitcoinusuario, I ran into a small startup out of California called Opennode. I reached out to them directly, told them about the community's recommendation of their platform, and we got to work on an integration with Shopify. Fortunately, they had already begun work on this and offer it right out of the box. They ran me through an expedited approval process, I got a hold of the API keys and BAM:
WE ARE INTEGRATED WITH SHOPIFY! (find the new integration at the bottom)
The way it works is:
- A customer lands on the store and adds their items to their cart
- He clicks checkout and is presented with the quick one-click payment integrations that are native to the platform (Apple Pay, Google Pay, Amazon Pay, and PayPal). You can't expect me to get rid of these 😇
- If he wants to pay with a credit card or installment payments, he skips this and proceeds by entering his email address and shipping information.
- In the final screen of checkout, he's once more presented with all his payment options. Bitcoin is there!
- Once selected, you click complete payment and you're taken to the payment's screen for Opennode. LIGHTNING IS NOW AN OPTION!
I'm not sure you understand how crazy this is guys. Bitcoin and Lightning are sitting next to the ranks of the world's biggest payment processors. What I'm working on now is getting more language right below the quick checkout buttons that point to Bitcoin as a payment option. I do not have access to the checkout.liquid files with my current plan, so this will have to come next year. Nevertheless, I'm thrilled to have accepted my first Bitcoin transaction yesterday. I had a few transactions go through with my older integration, but I'm happy the order went through seamlessly, the items were shipped, they got their tracking information, and they are now on their way to the customer.
Now, it's just a matter of getting other merchants to accept it. So it's up to YOU to start requesting this from every single merchant you buy from. Send them a quick email and say: Can you please accept Bitcoin? It's as simple as that. Don't give them shit for accepting credit cards through banks. You guys gave me hell because I was accepting Bitcoin via Coinbase Commerce. I admit, I did it because it was quick and it offers Litecoin and Ethereum as additional payment options. So if you would like to see these 2 back, please let me know in the comments!
If you run a store on Shopify, Woo Commerce, PrestaShop or OpenCart,, please consider adding Bitcoin as a payment option. If you're thinking about opening up a store, go here to see it in action and DM me with any questions on how to get started in e-commerce. If you have any suggestions on how to get the word out on stores that are currently accepting Bitcoin, I'm all ears.
One last thing. The reason why I can't skip Opennode and go completely native is that the experience HAS TO BE SEAMLESS for the customer. Sending out an e-mail to the customer with a wallet address is barbaric and unrealistic. This, however, is a step in the right direction.
Cheers guys and thanks for reading. Carry on!
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