How to start accepting bitcoin

Small businesses / individuals

If you would like to start accepting bitcoin directly as an individual or a small business there are a variety of options. The easiest, and fastest way to do things is to simply install the blink bitcoin lighting wallet to your mobile phone. The blink app will turn your phone into a bitcoin Point of Sale device. Download and install blink wallet to your device and begin accepting bitcoin payments in minutes.

If you have staff members that have their own mobile phones, you can also get them to install the app to their own phone, and allow customers to tip them directly in bitcoin, or let you pay them with bitcoin.

Blink Point of Sale web app

Once you have blink installed on your phone, your device acts as a PoS device for customers. With the web app you can also allow other users to create invoices on your behalf. This means you can get an website address for your PoS and open it on any device such as your business front desk, or one of your barristers mobile phone. Any payments made on the web app will arrive in your blink wallet.

The Point of Sale web app allows your business to take payments to your business owner wallet on your phone, without you having to leave your phone at the store.

Printable QR paycode

With the blink app you can print a static QR code invoice for hands-free payments that you can share online, or print out for customers to scan.

The QR code is unique to each blink wallet and has no amount value set, so a customer can simply scan it, and then type the amount they would like to send to you. This is a great option to put on display at market stalls, send to the table with the bill at a restaurant, or even to put on display at the front desk of your establishment.

Lightning Address

Blink lets users set a permanent lightning address for receiving bitcoin lightning payments. This address looks like an email address, but it is used for receiving bitcoin payments. Blink wallet will let you choose your unique address such as: wedobitcoin@blink.sv. As long as the address has not already been claimed, anything goes.

The benefit of a lightning address is that its easy to read and remember for the customer, and it is simple to include on a business card or website. Any customer with a bitcoin lightning wallet can send bitcoin to your lightning address, and it will arrive in your app on your phone.

Bigger businesses with more turnover

If your business needs a more professional and robust solution to accepting bitcoin payments at multiple locations, online, and with a lot of volume, then we suggest using a company such as Money Badger as a solution.

Money Badger is equipped to handle bigger customers such as Pick n Pay, GeeWiz and Butlers Pizza. If this is more along the lines of what your business needs, please contact them directly at https://www.moneybadger.co.za

The Self Sovereign way

As a fun project a great way to take bitcoin payments is to run your own bitcoin and bitcoin lightning full node. Either on cloud hosting, or hosted at home on a Raspberry Pi, or an old laptop.

Install BTCPay server and process all your bitcoin payments and transactions yourself using your own hardware, with payments directly into your self custodial bitcoin wallets.

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