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Seymour Locksmiths has been willing to accept Bitcoin and Dash for their UK services, but after offering to do so for four years, they have not had a single cryptocurrency transaction.

The owners and operators of Seymour Locksmiths have been big believers in cryptocurrencies and wanted to put that to the test in September 2014 by accepting crypto for their business services. In their post they explain one possible reason as “a very small percentage of our customers posses Bitcoin in a hot wallet ready to transfer and secondly, Bitcoin can be slow and expensive for small payments”. Nevertheless, they also noted that they have noticed a spike in cryptocurrency interest among their customers, especially during the 2017 boom.

Despite the zero cryptocurrency transactions, they said they plan to continue accepting Bitcoin and Dash and are even looking into accepting other cryptocurrencies. They also cite some reasons for why other businesses should still look into accepting cryptocurrency.

You are helping spread awareness and understanding of Bitcoin to your local community.

It can bring traffic to your website. Sites like Luno have pages dedicated to listing businesses that accept Bitcoin.

It shows your customers that you are a forward thinking company.

Bitcoin is not subject to chargebacks.

Incentivizing cryptocurrency adoption

In a reddit discussion of the post, one user asked Seymour Locksmiths about discounts since they were concerned about holding Bitcoin during volatility and the various fiat-to-crypto exchange fees.

“No we don’t offer any discount when paying with Bitcoin at the moment. We think it would probably add more confusion than it’s worth passing the cost saving on from the card company.”

Overall, the lack of transactions bring attention to the fact that there still are adoption barriers for cryptocurrency, especially among more mainstream users in the developed world. If individuals are looking for a simple way to pay then they are going to look towards their current methods and avoid the hassle of learning something new. Cryptocurrencies have high appeal in developing nations, like Colombia and Venezuela where the current infrastructure is lackluster and consumers and merchants can easily see the benefits of a peer-to-peer, digital currency. Thus, to reach the individuals that cannot as easily see the benefits, additional incentives are needed to make the benefits more clear.

Dash helps incentivize growth

Dash has recognized this barrier and thus is customizing its adoption to each area based on the local consumer and merchant habits. Primarily, AnyPay POS gets funded by the Dash DAO Treasury to offer DashBack, which gives a discount/rebate to both the consumer and merchant whenever a transaction is made at select merchants. This helps solve the adoption barrier that the redditor mentioned.

Then Dash helps mitigate adoption barriers in other areas by funding community outreach groups to help educate individuals about Dash, how to use it, and how it benefits their own interests. This can take the form of the Colombian Dash Invites program to encourage local gatherings, the Dash Force meetups, conferences, and more. These all help encourage and incentivize Dash adoption since it is making the process a little bit easier by lowing switching costs for consumers and merchants that are hesitant about cryptocurrency.