For merchants, bitcoin more PR pop than potential

Accepting digital currency might seem edgy and hip, making it a cheap marketing tool, but despite lower transaction fees for merchants, bitcoin still lags behind credit cards in convenience

By Sydney Ember / NY times news service





Jason Hand had more money in his bitcoin wallet than in his savings account. So when he wanted a white linen suit for a vacation to Panama, he turned to overstock.com, a discount retailer that accepted the virtual currency. The suit he selected cost about US$100, or a little more than one-tenth of a bitcoin.

“Bitcoin is essentially just online cash,” he said. “You should be able to pay for things however you want to pay for them.”

Merchants that accept bitcoins are trying to attract virtual currency enthusiasts like Hand, 37, of Boulder, Colorado, and the number of merchants has been growing.

Illustration: Yusha

Since January, major retailers like overstock.com, online travel booking site Expedia, computer maker Dell and satellite television provider Dish Network have started allowing customers to pay using the virtual currency on their Web sites. Bitcoin supporters view the more widespread adoption of the online unit by popular companies as an important step toward pushing the currency into the mainstream.

Yet even as more retailers embrace digital money, the number of consumers using bitcoins to make purchases has remained small. There are benefits for merchants in offering bitcoin as a payment option — lower processing fees rank high on the list — but some have questioned whether accepting virtual currency amounts to anything more than a marketing gimmick.

“From the store’s viewpoint, I think it’s great publicity,” Citigroup research analyst Steven Englander said. “It makes you edgy.”

DIGITAL MONEY

Despite the increase in merchants that accept bitcoin, the number of daily bitcoin transactions has hovered at about 60,000 since the beginning of the year, according to blockchain.info.

Overstock, which began taking bitcoin as a form of payment in January, said that only about 0.25 percent of its sales were in the virtual currency, or about US$12,000 to US$15,000 a day. With about US$1.3 billion in total sales last year, Overstock was the first big-name merchant to adopt bitcoin.

Expedia, which had about US$4.8 billion in revenue last year, also said that less than 1 percent of its sales had been in bitcoin since it began accepting the currency in June. Dell, which started allowing bitcoin payments on its Web site last month, declined to disclose specific figures about its bitcoin sales, but said that its biggest transaction to date was for a server costing about US$50,000, or 85 bitcoins.

Experts say one reason bitcoin transactions have not yet taken off is that the virtual currency does not provide obvious benefits for customers. In many ways, it is still easier to pay with a credit card or a PayPal account than with bitcoin, especially at retailers like coffee shops or grocery stores.

Transacting in bitcoin is also riskier because consumers are not protected against virtual currency fraud, making it a less appealing option for those mindful of the collapse of MtGox, a bitcoin trading platform that was based in Japan.

“My sense is that a few consumers try to use it as much as they can, but most consumers don’t find it nearly as convenient as using a credit card,” Englander said about the currency. “You transact in bitcoin because you love it, not because it gives you any major advantages.”

Another potential disadvantage is that the price of a bitcoin can be volatile. In about five years, the value of the virtual currency has gone from just a few US dollars to more than US$1,000. It is now trading at about US$500, according to virtual currency site CoinDesk.

When bitcoin was introduced in 2009 by an anonymous programmer, or group of programmers, it appealed to anti-establishment enthusiasts and technology buffs who operated outside the traditional financial system. More recently, it has become more popular, particularly among investment firms and entrepreneurs. However, without government regulation, many are reluctant to use the virtual currency.

Yet for merchants there is a significant upside. It costs companies little to accept bitcoin beyond first establishing a new payment channel. Processing fees for bitcoin transactions are often much lower for retailers. When customers use a credit card or debit card, these fees can be about 3 percent.

By contrast, Coinbase, a third-party payment processor that has teamed up with many of these big retailers to accept bitcoins, charges a 1 percent processing fee after the first US$1 million in sales.

Overstock chief executive Patrick Byrne estimated that it cost about US$100,000 to integrate bitcoin into the site’s payment system, pennies compared with the millions of dollars it spends on advertising, for example.

Expedia vice president of global product Michael Gulman said: “We have costs associated with running our business. The lower we can get those costs, the better.”

MARKETING

It is difficult to put an exact figure on the number of merchants that accept bitcoin, but experts say the total globally is as many as 80,000. Big-name retailers like Expedia and Overstock get more attention, but most of these companies are mom-and-pop stores.

Some say the interest among smaller businesses points to a mounting frustration with processing fees and chargebacks, which can hurt the bottom lines of local shops.

“These are the businesses that are hit hardest by credit card fees,” said Adam White, director of business development and strategy at Coinbase. “For them, bitcoin is not ‘nice to have,’ it is the only option for them to survive.”

Accepting bitcoins may also be a marketing tactic. When retailers started accepting bitcoins, a big appeal was the virtual currency’s ability to attract new customers with its novelty. Being among the first to embrace bitcoin was an easy, relatively cheap way for companies to capitalize on interest in digital money, said Derek Rucker, a marketing professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

“They are not just manufacturing curiosity and interest, they are borrowing interest,” he said about these retailers.

“It is possible they are using their association with bitcoin for different reasons, but clearly, it’s an attention-grabber,” Rucker added.

Merchants like Overstock and Dell said they experienced an initial bump in activity on their sites after announcing they would accept bitcoin, especially after they received media attention.

Yet now, some see signs that there may be a bit of bitcoin fatigue. Sales at Overstock, for example, have fallen considerably since its first week of bitcoin transactions, when it had about US$500,000 worth, Byrne said.

“There is a corner of the market that wanted to use bitcoin and this was a chance to get that piece of the market before anyone else got to it,” Byrne said. “People who accept it now are not going to get nearly the publicity that we did.”