Tando.me's avatar
Tando.me Tando.me@tando.me 1 year ago
Yo @Nathan Day I've got an interesting question for you about BTCMap... Is the intention to display all businesses that accept BTC? OR Is the intention to display all businesses where you can spend BTC? The subtle difference there could open up many more listings. With apps like what we are building with Tando, or similarly Bringin, BitcoinJungle, Mt Pelerin, Opago, Lipa, etc.... we are seeing more tools that let people spend, but the receiver doesn't even know Bitcoin is being used by the payer. In a few days, we will publicly launch Tando which turns all 100,000+ business in all of Kenya into a biz you can spend bitcoin at. From street vendors to shopping malls, spend sats anywhere, easily. So the question is, how does that affect BTCMap when the entire country of Kenya is orange for sats spenders? I imagine most users of BTCmap want to know where they can spend? image

Replies (10)

SPA (Super Phat Arrow)'s avatar
SPA (Super Phat Arrow) spa@bitcoiner.guide 1 year ago
To the customer, it doesn't matter if the merchant keeps the Bitcoin or gets fiat, only that they can spend Bitcoin at the merchant. A good example is Pick n Pay supermarkets in South Africa. They don't know the customer is paying in Bitcoin and they are on the map. Good luck!
2 replies ↓
Tando.me's avatar
Tando.me Tando.me@tando.me 1 year ago
Yeah that's my leaning as well as a bitcoiner. But glad to hear others takes as well in case I'm too biased. 👍
Tando.me's avatar
Tando.me Tando.me@tando.me 1 year ago
Merchants don't need to change anything about how they do business today. At any store in the country I can just key in the bill amount and their 7-digit store ID, I get a lightning invoice to pay. Once I pay, they receive Kenyan shillings. Easy & Fast.
1 replies ↓
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Tando.me Tando.me@tando.me 1 year ago
Stores apply for a business account with Safaricom -- the owner of the Mpesa mobile money network in Kenya. Safaricom assigns them a 6-7 digit till number, to which customers can send funds from their own mobile money accounts. Yes customers would need our app, or eventually the PWA web version. Our app gets a paid receipt string back from the mpesa service which we display in the app once funds are sent, and on the merchants end they see the same receipt string in their POS terminal. Customers will typically show that string to the cashier who verifies it matches the string (& amount) they were sent from Mpesa, and if they match, transaction is completed.
1 replies ↓
Tando.me's avatar
Tando.me Tando.me@tando.me 1 year ago
Pay Bill is another payment type we handle as well. These are typically for things like utilities where the company has their account number, but you as a customer have your own account number with them. Imagine a water utility or ISP that needs to credit your account payment to your balance. Payment flow is almost identical to Till (ie Buy Goods) except there's one additional field to enter: your customer account number. And lastly 3rd payment type is P2P, for mobile to mobile transfers. Paying friends, or buying street food etc from individual entrepreneurs/hustlers that don't have their own till number account. Boda-boda (local motorcycle taxi drivers) is a good example of a vendor that use this payment method primarily. So ya, you can process every transaction type in the country paying with any bitcoin lightning wallet using Tando.
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