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The rapid growth in bitcoin users means restaurants, cafés and bars target-ing millennials and other tech-savvy consumers should give serious consider-ation to accepting the virtual currency.

Rapid adoptionVirtual currencies — money that exists only in digital form and is used as an alternative to government-issued currencies — have been available since the late 1990s. But it took the launch of bitcoin in 2009 for virtual currencies to begin to see any significant adoption.

Bitcoin, which allows people to send and receive payments online within an entirely decentralized peer-to-peer network, has become the most promi-nent type of virtual currency worldwide.

Among the many virtual currencies are litecoin (which is technically nearly identical to bitcoin), dogecoin, namecoin, and peercoin. “None of these vir-tual currencies are anywhere near bitcoin in terms of adoption,” said Patrick Byrne, CEO of U.S.-based online discount retailer Overstock.com, which has accepted bitcoin since January 2014.

There were 13,372,025 bitcoins in circulation on October 11, 2014, worth around $4.76 billion, according to bitcoin publication CoinDesk.com. Bit-

The basics of virtual currency and what restaurateurs need to know to accept virtual-currency payments.

Virtual Currency 101 for Restaurants

By Robin Arnfield Virtual Currency Today

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coin’s value fluctuates daily. A whole bitcoin was worth $356 on CoinDesk’s USD Bitcoin Price Index (BPI) on October 11, 2014.

CoinDesk estimates that the number of bitcoin wallets worldwide rose from 765,039 in June 2013 to 5.4 million in June 2014 and to 6.6 million in Sep-tember 2014. Bitcoin was accepted by 76,000 merchants, the vast majority being online businesses, in September 2014, up from 63,000 worldwide in June 2014.

Merchant acceptanceTier 1 merchants such as Dell, Expedia, Overstock.com, TigerDirect and Virgin Atlantic accept bitcoin, which is helping drive consumer awareness of virtual currencies. “A small but growing segment of consumers want to pay with bitcoin,” Byrne said. “The number of bitcoin users is growing at 30 percent a month, and the number of bitcoin wallets is growing eightfold year-on-year.”

So far, major foodservice chains such as Starbucks and Subway have yet to accept bitcoin, leaving small, independently owned restaurants and cof-fee shops to pioneer bitcoin acceptance in the industry.

A glance at Bitcoin Restaurants’ directory of U.S. bitcoin-accepting restau-rants doesn’t reveal any major names.

“BitPay’s restaurant clients are mostly independently owned businesses with maybe two to three outlets,” said Andy Phillipson, director of engineer-ing services at Atlanta-based bitcoin merchant processor BitPay.

CNBC reported in November 2013 that Sapan Shah, a Subway franchisee in Allentown, Pennsylvania, had become the first U.S. Subway restaurant-operator to accept bitcoin.

Subway did not endorse his decision to accept bitcoins. Shah uses an app on a tablet to convert bitcoin payments to U.S. dollars, he told CNBC.

The news that Shah’s Subway store had begun accepting bitcoins gener-ated a lot of publicity on social media sites, with bitcoin enthusiasts travel-ing long distances to shop at his restaurant, CNBC reported.

Bitcoin basicsBitcoin was developed to eliminate the middleman when two parties ex-change payment for goods and services. That means no banks or third- party networks such as MasterCard or Visa are involved in the bitcoin payment process.

“Digital currency is the wave of the future.” — Chris Ciabarra, Revel Systems’ chief technology officer

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According to the Mercator Advisory Group report “Bitcoin Basics, Trends, Regulations, and Usage,” bitcoin’s main attraction always has been that it isn’t an institution, an organization or any sort of centralized entity.

“Since there’s no central authority, bitcoin has thrived due to its transparent and hassle-free nature for both buyers and sellers,” the report said. “While the governments of the U.S., U.K. or the European Union are not likely to shut down bitcoin, rules and regulations will likely be imposed as the digital currency’s popularity continues to grow in select markets around the world.”

In 2008, a Japanese IT expert using the name Satoshi Nakamoto published the original bitcoin protocol and reference software and created the first bitcoins in January 2009. No one knows Nakamoto’s true identity for sure, and it is possible that Satoshi is either a person or a group of people.

Bitcoin is referred to as a “cryptocurrency,” because bitcoin accounts are protected by cryptography. Currencies issued by central banks are known as “fiat currencies” (“fiat” being Latin for “let it be done”).

Bitcoins are generated — or “mined” — as follows: Cryptographic puzzles are random-generated at a controlled rate by an open-source software program, then transmitted to a network of volunteer bitcoin miners.

Miners perform complex calculations on powerful computers to solve those cryptographic puzzles. The first miner to solve a puzzle receives 25 bit-coins. The open-source program will continue to generate puzzles until it reaches a limit of 21 million bitcoins in issue.

Bitcoins usually are sold anonymously through online exchanges to anonymous buyers, although a growing number of bitcoin exchanges such as Circle now are following know your customer (KYC) laws and are not anonymous.

Each bitcoin purchaser is given a unique public bitcoin address consisting of 27 to 34 alphanumeric characters, which also can be represented as a QR code. The purchaser uses that address to exchange bitcoins with other bitcoin users and merchants.

Bitcoin users store their bitcoin addresses and their private cryptographic keys, which act as the digital credentials allowing them to access their bitcoin holdings, in anonymous digital wallets. The disadvantage is that, if a user loses the private key, he or she loses the bitcoins.

Users can store their bitcoin wallets locally on their PCs or smartphones or on an exchange. However, using an exchange is considerably less secure than local storage.

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Every bitcoin transaction is recorded in a public ledger called the block chain. Essentially, the block chain is a history of all confirmed transactions and a record of how many bitcoins each bitcoin address contains. Bitcoin transactions are verified by a network of computers to prevent double spending, and payments are irrevocable. That means it is impossible for buyers to chargeback bitcoin purchases.

Bitcoin ATMsInstalling a bitcoin ATM can provide a way for restaurants and coffee shops to attract customers who want to buy and sell bitcoins for cash.

The world’s first bitcoin ATM was installed at a Vancouver, Canada, cof-fee shop owned by Vancouver-based Waves Coffee House in October 2013. The ATM, which was manufactured by Las Vegas, Nevada-based Robocoin, was supplied by Bitcoiniacs. Customers can insert cash into the ATM and receive bitcoins or pay with bitcoins and receive cash, with cur-rency conversion taking place through Canadian bitcoin exchange Virtex.

To comply with Canadian anti-money laundering (AML) regulations, us-ers can carry out only C$3,000 ($2,678) worth of bitcoin transactions per day at Waves Coffee House’s ATM. A palm scan ID for each transaction is used for customer authentication and to ensure that an individual does not exceed the daily limit.

In its first eight days, Waves Coffee House’s bitcoin ATM handled 348 transactions worth a total of $100,000, Kiosk Marketplace reported.

As of September 2014, 51 bitcoin ATMs were in operation across the U.S., according to FxPips.com.

Advantages for consumersBitcoin is attractive to consumers for several reasons. First, it appeals to tech-savvy millennials for whom the Internet and smartphones are a way of life.

“Bitcoin acceptance is a way of signaling to millennials that a retailer or restaurant is hip and ‘with it,’” Overstock.com’s Byrne said.

Bitcoin is similar to cash payments as it doesn’t require buyers to disclose sensitive information such as credit- or debit-card expiration dates or card verification values (CVVs) to merchants. Provided consumers protect their bitcoin wallets, bitcoin payments are more secure than credit- or debit-card transactions.

“If you’re in a market where you want to indicate to millennials that you’re cool and hip, then you should accept bitcoin.”— Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com

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Bitcoin transactions are mostly free of charge to consumers, or there may be minimal fees, whereas retailers may pass on their credit- or debit-card merchant fees to their customers.

Bitcoin appeals to consumers who are concerned about the stability of the financial system and about the risk of a central bank confiscating their deposits in order to recapitalize itself, as the government of Cyprus did in March 2013. Because bitcoin is decentralized, consumers control their bitcoin deposits, which cannot be confiscated by a central bank or frozen by a retail bank or payment processor.

Advantages for restaurantsAccording to Bitcoin Restaurants, the fast-growing bitcoin user base is enthusiastic about supporting the cryptocurrency.

“The bitcoin community is young, vibrant and avidly supports businesses that accept their bitcoins,” it says. “By adding bitcoin to your payment options, you gain instant access to this high-spending, big-eating de-mographic … Bitcoin is stirring up quite a bit of buzz these days. Many vendors and restaurants [that accept bitcoin] get a great dose of low-cost publicity that will help to keep their dining room full.”

Bitcoin is attractive to merchants because it solves the problem of payment card chargebacks and fraud, says Stephanie Wargo, BitPay’s vice presi-dent of marketing. “Card fraud and chargebacks are huge problems for merchants.”

Bitcoin acceptance reduces retailers’ security compliance overhead, says Chris Ciabarra, chief technology officer at San Francisco-based point-of-sale system vendor Revel Systems.

“Not having to store credit or debit card numbers in your POS system and run the risk of a data breach is a big benefit of accepting bitcoin.”

Bitcoin payments are instantaneous, but they take 10 minutes to be con-firmed by the block chain. Merchants need to decide whether to opt for “zero-confirmation” transactions, which means they take the risk of accept-ing a transaction that has yet to be confirmed by the block chain. Alterna-tively, they can wait 10 minutes for confirmation.

“When a bitcoin payment happens, the processor does a quick check to see that the transaction has gone through and is genuine,” Ciabarra said. “The full check with the block chain takes 10 minutes because of the com-putational processing involved. The risk level with bitcoin payments is very low, and, for small-value transactions, it’s OK to hand over goods without

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waiting for the full security check. But, for a $1,000 transaction, it’s definitely worth waiting the 10 minutes.”

Accepting bitcoin as an alternative to credit-card payments will help reduce a merchant’s costs. “This is because credit-card merchant fees are based on a percentage of the transaction value,” said Robert Hughes, managing partner at U.S.-based consultancy Bank Solutions Group. Bitcoin process-ing fees are either very low or free of charge, depending on the deal offered by a merchant’s bitcoin processor.

Bitcoin’s low cost base means that it is viable for restaurants, cafés and other foodservice providers to accept bitcoin for low-value purchases instead of cash. “If a consumer makes a low-value purchase with a credit card, the merchant processing fee will account for most of the transaction revenue,” Wargo said.

ProcessorsBitcoin processors enable merchants to accept bitcoin payments, and they act as intermediaries between retailers and bitcoin exchanges.

Processors include BitPay, San Francisco-based Coinbase, BIPS, and Santa Monica, California-based GoCoin.

Coinbase has 1.7 million consumer wallets and 36,000 merchants globally. It charges zero fees to instantly convert bitcoin to local currencies for a mer-chant’s first $1 million in bitcoin transactions taking place on its platform. Af-ter that amount, Coinbase charges a 1 percent transaction fee. Merchants receive payments into their bank accounts within two to three days.

BitPay processes bitcoin transactions for 40,000 clients, including computer product e-retailers Newegg and TigerDirect, the National Basketball As-sociation’s Sacramento Kings, blog hosting company WordPress and social game vendor Zynga. It has no processing fees.

“BitPay is strictly B2B (business to business) and doesn’t offer consumer wallets,” Wargo said. “Our business model is to offer SaaS (software as a service) and 24/7 customer support. Merchants process with BitPay for free, but there are fees for adding features and services.”

“My advice to merchants is very simple,” Overstock.com’s Byrne said. “Work with a processor like Coinbase or BitPay. For small merchants, the best approach is to let the bitcoin processor do the integration work.”

“The value of a processor such as BitPay or Coinbase is that it quotes the bitcoin exchange rate, handles the bitcoin payment and currency conversion and vouches for the genuineness of the payment.”— Steven Leeds, director of marketing at TigerDirect

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SquareSquare’s CEO Jack Dorsey said in September 2014 that the mobile payments provider is building a version of its iOS- and Android-based Register POS software, which will accept bitcoin as well as Apple’s new Apple Pay system.

“We’re building a register so sellers can accept a credit card, so they can accept cash, so they can accept a check, so they can accept bitcoin and so they can accept any form of payment that comes across the counter includ-ing future ones and burgeoning ones like Apple Pay,” Dorsey told Canada’s CBC News.

“Square’s announcement is a huge step toward bitcoin becoming main-stream,” Revel Systems’ Ciabarra said.

Square already offers merchants listed on its Square Market e-commerce platform the option of accepting bitcoin for online purchases.

Once Square Register starts accepting bitcoin for face-to-face payments, this will be good news for small restaurants, cafés, food trucks and vendors at farmers markets who use Square’s system to accept card payments.

What restaurants need to know to accept bitcoin“Displaying a ‘Bitcoin accepted here’ sign in your store window is critical,” Ciabarra said. “Otherwise, customers won’t know you take bitcoin.”

Restaurants can accept bitcoin in two ways: via stand-alone mobile pay-ments apps running on a tablet or smartphone, and through an integrated bitcoin-embedded POS system.

Similar to a person-to-person bitcoin payment, a stand-alone mobile pay-ment involves the customer sending the correct number of bitcoins to the merchant’s bitcoin wallet by using a bitcoin wallet app.

To receive a P2P payment, merchants need to download an app from a provider such as BitPay or Coinbase, which lets a merchant enter the price of an item or service into a smartphone or tablet. The app presents a QR code containing the amount to be paid and the bitcoin address the money should be sent to. The customer scans that QR code with his or her smart-phone and sends the payment to the merchant.

“A stand-alone bitcoin payment app is the easiest way for a face-to-face merchant to accept bitcoin,” BitPay’s Phillipson said.

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However, a disadvantage of that approach is that it requires purchase trans-actions to be entered twice: at the POS system and on the merchant’s mobile device. In an integrated POS system, the employee just hits the bitcoin payment button, and the POS software generates a QR code on the POS device’s screen for scanning by the customer. “The employee doesn’t have to enter the amount, as the POS system knows the amount,” Ciabarra said.

BitPay“If a restaurant or other face-to-face merchant wants to accept bitcoins through BitPay, they need to create a BitPay account,” Phillipson said. “This will provide them with a settlement mechanism through BitPay. We will also take care of their KYC (know your customer) and AML (anti-money launder-ing) compliance requirements.”

BitPay provides a stand-alone bitcoin app for Android devices, which mer-chants can download from the Google Play app store. “Merchants can also use a BitPay payments browser on their mobile device to accept bitcoin,” Phillipson said. BitPay is in the process of developing an iOS app for bitcoin acceptance at the point of sale.

As BitPay’s stand-alone POS app is not integrated with the merchant’s POS system, it doesn’t manage inventory. “It just enables them to accept bitcoin,” Phillipson said. “The merchant keys in the amount, and there is an opportu-nity for the customer to add a tip. Then a QR code is generated for scanning by the customer.”

BitPay also offers integrated bitcoin acceptance at POS systems through partnerships with integrated POS system providers and merchant acquirers. “We integrate our bitcoin payment gateway with these POS system providers and merchant processors,” Phillipson said.

In August 2014, U.S.-based payments services provider Global Payments signed a referral agreement with BitPay that will allow Global Payments to of-fer bitcoin acceptance to its worldwide merchants. “Global Payments custom-ers who want to accept bitcoin will be referred to BitPay,” a Global Payments spokesperson said.

Integrated POS technology vendorsIntegrated POS technology vendors offering bitcoin acceptance include Mississauga, Ontario-based Visual Information Products in partnership with Toshiba; Portland, Oregon-based New West Technologies; Revel Systems; and Coconut Creek, Florida-based SoftTouch.

“If restaurants don’t want to use an integrated bitcoin POS solution, they are at a significant disadvantage. Having to enter bitcoin transactions into the POS system as well as into the stand-alone app will result in reconciliation challenges.”— Michael Paycher, president of SoftTouch

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BitPay provides bitcoin processing for the Toshiba VisualTouch POS system, which was developed by Visual Information Products and runs on Toshiba hardware. In addition, BitPay has a partnership with restaurant and hospital-ity POS system vendor SoftTouch.

BitPay also is providing integrated bitcoin processing for customers of New West Technologies who use the Microsoft Dynamics Retail Manage-ment System.

Revel Systems uses Coinbase as the bitcoin processor for its iPad-based POS platform. “We put a native bitcoin app on our POS system,” Ciabarra said. “Our system has two iPads: an employee-facing iPad and a customer-facing iPad which displays a bitcoin QR code for scanning by the customer. In our implementation, a waiter or waitress can take a customer-facing iPad to the table for payment.”

“We’re finding that 5 percent of our customers are asking for our bitcoin system, which is a good response rate for a new technology,” Ciabarra said. “Two-thirds (65 percent) of our customers using the bitcoin solution are restaurants, and the rest are retailers. We’re seeing a lot of adoption in New York.”

Phillipson expects restaurant acceptance of bitcoin to grow. “We’ve seen a lot of traction this year among restaurants and other face-to-face retailers, more than in 2013,” he said.

“Bitcoin acceptance is definitely growing in the restaurant market,” agreed Ciabarra. “Our restaurant clients tell us that the reason they are installing our bitcoin technology is because some of their customers want to pay with bitcoin as they have bitcoin wallets. They are finding that customers who pay with bitcoin are likely to come back to the restaurant more often. So offering bitcoin payments is good for customer retention.”

“Restaurants and bars absolutely need to offer bitcoin acceptance for tech-savvy millennials.”— Chris Ciabarra, Revel Systems’ chief technology officer

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SoftTouchSoftTouch has integrated BitPay’s payments gateway with its POS software so restaurants can accept bitcoin from their POS terminals without needing separate bitcoin-acceptance devices.

Customers can pay with bitcoin by scanning the QR code on their guest check onto their smartphone. “To add a gratuity, customers using our sys-tem can either enter their own amount or select a percentage,” said Michael Paycher, SoftTouch’s president. “When the customer is presented with their guest check and selects bitcoin, the exchange rate is fixed until they pay.”

Although full transaction confirmation with the block chain takes 10 minutes, BitPay gives the merchant confirmation within a few seconds, just as fast as a credit-card transaction, Paycher said. “In a fast-food environment, the cus-tomer’s food order is released to the kitchen for fulfillment once our system has indicated that their bitcoin funds have been paid,” he said.

SoftTouch also offers the QuickPay system, which enables restaurant cus-tomers to pay at their table using a credit card or bitcoin without needing to wait for the waiter or waitress to present them with the check. They enter the QuickPay website address displayed on a card on their table along with their table number onto their mobile device, and then they are able to see their guest check.

SoftTouch’s POS system is sold through value-added resellers and can be used by restaurants of any size, Paycher said. The retail price for the soft-ware starts at $1,295.

Exchange ratesIf a merchant holds money in a bitcoin account, it will be subject to the risk of fluctuations in the exchange rate between bitcoin and its local currency.

The Mobile Payments Today infographic “Is Bitcoin the Future of Currency?” notes that bitcoin has no official value. Bitcoin buyers and sellers must agree on the price, which usually is based on the value of recent trades elsewhere.

Bitcoin’s value is extremely volatile, and it has fallen from a peak of $1,147 on Dec. 4, 2013, according to CoinDesk’s Bitcoin Price Index.

“BitPay protects its merchants and their customers against price volatility by holding and locking in the bitcoin exchange rate for 15 minutes,” Wargo said. “Consumers have 15 minutes to complete the transaction before the exchange rate quoted on their screen becomes invalid and another bitcoin price appears.”

Foodler is a service that enables consumers to order and pay online or via their mobile devices for takeout or home-delivery food from 16,357 restaurants across the U.S.

Customers have the option of paying online with a credit card or with bitcoin or of paying cash when they pick up their order. There is no extra charge for using Foodler.

“Within seconds of creating a Foodler ac-count, you can deposit bitcoins to your account,” Foodler states on its website. “These will appear as Foodler credits in U.S. dollars, and are a valid form of pay-ment for all delivery and takeout orders on Foodler. You can even tip your delivery driver (using bitcoin) — we’ll pay them in U.S. dollars.”

Menufy lets U.S. consumers order online and pay with bitcoin, credit cards or cash for takeout or home-delivery meals from participating local restaurants.

Pizzaforcoins.com is a start-up that lets consumers order and pay with bitcoin for pizzas from their local Domino’s Pizza, Pizza Hut and Papa John’s restaurants. Rather than a U.S. dollar value, each item on the Pizzaforcoins.com menu has a bit-coin value.

Foodler, Menufy and Pizzaforcoins.com

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Merchants can split their bitcoin revenues between bitcoins and local cur-rencies on BitPay’s platform. “They can cover their hard costs by converting enough bitcoins to local currency and keep the rest in bitcoins so they can experience bitcoin exchange rate appreciation,” Wargo said. “Half (50 per-cent) of our merchants convert their bitcoins instantly to their local currency, 5 to 10 percent hold 100 percent in bitcoin, and 40 to 45 percent do a split.”

U.S. merchants holding bitcoins are liable to capital gains tax on any growth in value, following the U.S. government’s announcement of firm guidelines on bitcoin taxation in May 2014. The government said it considers bitcoin as property, not as currency, for tax purposes and therefore subject to the same tax treatment as investments in stocks.

Restaurants and bars accepting bitcoin

Waves Coffee HouseWaves Coffee House installed its first bitcoin ATM in October 2013 in its Howe Street coffee shop in Vancouver.

Waves, which has 31 coffee shops in British Columbia and Alberta, also has a bitcoin ATM at one of its Calgary outlets.

“In the two coffee shops that currently have bitcoin ATMs, we accept bitcoin at the point of sale,” said John Murray, Waves’ operations general manager. “If you don’t have enough bitcoins for your coffee purchase, you can get more bitcoins at the ATM, so you don’t have to use cash or cards. We put a sticker in the window saying that we accept bitcoin.”

Murray said he expects to see a 10 percent increase in sales in 2014 com-pared with 2013 for the Waves stores with bitcoin ATMs.

“This is attributable to our bitcoin ATMs and bitcoin acceptance and also to other factors such as marketing promotions and offers,” he said. “We are definitely pleased with our experience of bitcoin.”

Waves installed bitcoin ATMs to bring customers into its coffee shops, Murray said.

“In our two coffee shops that have bitcoin ATMs, we see regular customers coming in daily to buy and sell bitcoins at the ATMs,” he said. “Maybe they don’t hold stocks, so bitcoin is the equivalent of a stock for them. Bitcoin definitely drives traffic to our stores.”

By the end of 2014, Waves will have installed two additional bitcoin ATMs — one in Vancouver and one in Edmonton — making a total of four locations

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with bitcoin ATMs. “In 2015, we will roll out bitcoin acceptance at the point of sale in all our stores,” Murray said. Waves opted to integrate bitcoin acceptance into its POS terminals, as that is more efficient than having to use a stand-alone acceptance device, Murray said. “In a coffee shop, bitcoin acceptance has to be efficient, so we didn’t want double-entry,” he said. “We also don’t hold any bitcoins.”

“As coffee purchases are low-ticket transactions, we don’t wait for the full 10-minute block chain confirmation,” Murray said.

Murray recommends that coffee shops and restaurants accept bitcoin. “Bit-coin is not going away,” he said. “It represents a fundamental change in the entire monetary system. Retailers or restaurants that are targeting millenni-als have to offer bitcoin acceptance. At Waves, we are looking for the next generation of customers, which is why we accept bitcoin.”

Murray stressed that if a retailer or restaurant accepts bitcoin at the point of sale, it is not necessary to have a bitcoin ATM.

“But I think it is a good thing to install a bitcoin ATM,” he said. “There are consumers who won’t trade stocks but they will trade in bitcoin. Our policy is that we wouldn’t want to have bitcoin ATMs in our coffee shops that are close to each other. We want our bitcoin ATMs to be spread out.”

The Volstead ActThe Volstead Act, a bar in Spokane, Washington, started taking bitcoin in January 2014. “The initial response was good, but, because there isn’t a large bitcoin community in Spokane, the actual transaction volume is quite low,” said Ash Hayden, the bar’s general manager. “We offer a 15 percent discount for payments in bitcoin.”

The Volstead Act accepts bitcoin because it is keen to educate consumers about the cryptocurrency and help grow adoption, Hayden said. “For us, there are a number of benefits from accepting bitcoin,” he said. “For example, there are no transaction fees, so we save the 3 percent credit card merchant fee. There are no chargebacks, and we receive the money instantly. From the customer’s point of view, paying with bitcoin means there is no risk of identity theft.”

When customers pay their bar tabs, they have to tell the bartender if they want to pay with bitcoin. “We treat bitcoin payments as cash transactions,” Hayden said. “We print out the customer’s check so they know the amount they have to pay. Then they scan our bitcoin QR code and pay out of their

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bitcoin wallet. As we haven’t integrated bitcoin payments with our POS system, we have to manually ring up the fact that they have paid by bitcoin into the till.”

SamovarIn June 2014, Samovar, a small tea-house chain in San Francisco, began accepting bitcoin. The company uses a stand-alone Android tablet for bit-coin transactions.

“Our experience with bitcoin is that it has been a lot of fun,” said Josh Jacobs, Samovar’s director of sales and marketing. “Bitcoin represents a pretty small percentage of our sales, but our customer base is techies and also technology investor types. So we wanted to offer them bitcoin.”

Providing bitcoin acceptance is a way for Samovar to differentiate itself from competing coffee-shops and tea houses, Jacobs added.

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REFERENCES

Mobile Payments Today“Bitcoin: The Future of currency?” Infographic sponsored by Jumio and Bitcoin Identity Security Open Network.http://www.mobilepaymentstoday.com/blogs/bitcoin-the-future-of-currency-infographic/http://www.mobilepaymentstoday.com/topics/bitcoin/whitepapers/

“Royal Canadian Mint conducts crypto-currency trial”http://www.mobilepaymentstoday.com/articles/royal-canadian-mint-conducts-crypto-currency-trial/

The Chamber of Digital Commerce, a Washington, D.C.-based trade industry association promoting the use of digital currencies.http://www.digitalchamber.org/

Directory of U.S. bitcoin-accepting restaurantshttp://bitcoinrestaurants.net/

Bitcoin community wikihttps://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Main_Pagehttps://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Merchant_Howto

Foodlerwww.foodler.com

Menufyhttps://www.menufy.com/

New West Technologieshttp://www.newestech.com/

Pizzaforcoins.comwww.Pizzaforcoins.com

Revel Systemshttp://revelsystems.com/features/bitcoin

Robocoinhttps://robocoin.com/

SoftTouchhttp://www.softtouchpos.com/

Toshiba VisualTouchhttp://www.VisualTouchUSA.comhttp://visualtouchpos.com/