I was excited today when I visited a local coffee shop that CashApp's BTC map identified as accepting bitcoin "over the lightning network", according to the app.
So I got there and ordered my $9 Ethiopian pour over. And when it came time to pay, the cashier turned the PoS terminal to me and I saw the interface for tapping my card. I asked her, "Um, sorry, is there a way to pay with Bitcoin? I saw on a map that you guys accept Bitcoin."
She looked quite confused, turned the terminal around and pressed a few buttons. She said she didn't know, but maybe I could try this, turning the terminal back and showing me a cashapp QR code. Oh, excellent, I thought, this must be it. But I scanned the QR code using the "pay in bitcoin" scanner in CashApp, and it didn't work. Invalid lightning address. I wonder if I could have scanned from a more generic payment scanner within CashApp, and it'd automatically deduct my bitcoin and covert it to USD for the business? (Since I don't carry dollars on my CashApp account.) But I couldn't spend time fiddling around, because there was a line building behind me.
Thankfully, the owner was standing right behind the cashier. So the cashier tells the owner that this customer is trying to pay in Bitcoin. The owner turns around and with a somewhat unfriendly and irritated voice said, "Oh, we didn't get that update." I said, "Oh, yeah, because on the CashApp map it says you guys accept Bitcoin." Now, even more irritably, "Yeah, we didn't get that update." I felt too embarrassed to keep trying, so I decided to just tap my card.
My experience as well. This rollout has completely sucked
very disappointing! I feel underserved, as a bitcoiner.
Yeah me too. Let’s move to Lugano and split rent?
A lot of small and mid sized businesses probably have this same issue. @PlebLab, terminal setup still depends on an old iPad but we have the kiosk as well so it works for everything square but the bitcoin part which is weird.
So likely not their fault the hardware can keep running an older Square app and work just fine but it cannot meet Square’s current software requirements for newer POS features, including bitcoin related functionality in the latest rollout.
So this is less about one broken setup and more about legacy hardware getting left behind. For now we are fine just using Zaprite. Hope that helps clear up any problems with this local coffee shop, took me a day to figure this out when it first came out.
Lot of on margin businesses are unable to expense $700 for a new iPad just to use a Bitcoin feature, its just not conducive. Ideally this is why I will always believe Bitcoin adoption will come from bottom up, because of these types of use cases.
@NEEDcreations was able to use our Zaprite terminal when he visited the hackerspace.
Ah, that makes a lot of sense, including why the owner said they didn't "get the update." Which I did feel like was a better and more precise response than Siggy's experience with "the bitcoin machine is broken"
Still, a bit disappointing that the bitcoin upgrade requires newer hardware. Wouldn't have thought it, since it just has to generate a LN QR code, which doesn't seem like a big task.
yeah kinda a bummer, I was only able to figure this out once I reached out to their support to ask.
At the time they told me their would be no support for older hardware and that version of the Square terminal app, which from a technical support perspective makes sense I guess.
This is why you will see South Texas and Latin America create their own versions of a Bitcoin POS, because of this very problem, not exclusive to square or apple.
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I would love to see a video of what it looks like when it is working. Would be great to know what I was looking for. I have looked a few times and can't find anything. For example, is the following screen replaced with something else? Is there an extra button that appears on it?
That photo is exactly what it looked like for me, but the QR code wouldn't scan as a valid lightning address. Obviously, that's a regular cashapp payment QR and not a bitcoin specific one, but I thought CashApp's whole thing was that they'd make it seamless.
yea, I think seeing once what it is supposed to look like would help a lot. Seems a video of that doesn't exist anywhere that I can find.
Are merchants getting turned on as "Bitcoin accepting" on the cash app map automatically or something, even if their hardware don't have the feature or required update?
Use Coinos merchant POS
Square has begun rolling out an update where bitcoin payments will be enabled by default for the merchant (it initially rolled out where the merchant had to opt-in), so there will be no more of this confusion/bs to deal with anywhere that has a Square terminal. Soon.
But according to Car, the update won't be applied if you have older hardware, which a lot of these small businesses do:
#1471328
oh jeez okay I didn't realize this was an issue.
yeah, kinda sad!
But it also means that their map needs some cleaning up. They need a clear signal from the company that their bitcoin terminal is working. Shouldn't rely on self-reports or customer-reports.
What an unpleasant experience. I'm thankful you tried, though. Yet another reminder that we are pretty far from the world where you can spend bitcoin all over the place.
The worst is the weird stares you get, like people think you're an alien for asking.
It's funny how there is so much social stigma around the use of a foreign money.
I wonder if it is singularly an American or Western thing (we are pretty weird about money in general: people don't like to be asked how much they have, how much they make, how much things cost, etc) or if it's like coming up to people and trying to speak at them in a made up language like Esperanto or something.
This would be something really interesting to look into.
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What 'paying in Bitcoin' in a coffee shop feels like (at least in the US).
#1471475
Hopefully things will improve... However it's important to be patient. The vast majority of the people I come across, even millennials, don't know anything about bitcoin and the number of people who think it is a scam or 'great big ponzi' is enormous.
That's why I posted this picture... Hunter gatherer societies encountering an aircraft in the sky have no fucking idea what they are looking at. And it is the exact same when 'regular people' encounter energy based money or energy based digital capital.
makes perfect sense. Great analogy!
This seems very similar to my recent experience:
#1460651
Maybe BTC map is sometimes giving a too optimistic impression.
What bothers me is that it's not like the map is covered with stores claiming to accept Bitcoin. This coffeeshop was in Westwood Village, basically on UCLA campus. There are dozens and dozens of coffeeshops and restaurants, but on CashApp's map this was one of the only ones saying it accepted Bitcoin. So my question is -- how did it get on the map, if they don't actually accept Bitcoin?
I think what happens is one employee, manager or owner gets all excited about the new payment method (bitcoin) that will bring in business. Months go by, no one pays in bitcoin, and whichever employee cared about it loses interest or quits. Enthusiasm evaporates. Sellers aren't the issue, I think. It's lack of people who want to pay in bitcoin.
Yeah. This really sucks. It seems like a chicken & egg problem.
Since you got to the QR code, I’m guessing it’s a technical problem that they haven’t bothered to fix.
From Square’s end, it probably does look like they’re able to receive bitcoin payments.
Not sure, as I think that QR code might just be for a "regular" CashApp payment with dollars.
Oh, interesting.
It's because of experiences like this that charts and claims like these don't reflect real adoption as it should be—definitive for the user. Apps that handle the exchange between fiat and bitcoin are like pre-paid BTC cards; they're an illusion of what living the "bitcoin standard" would be, just window dressing, a monetary system wearing a bitcoin mask. Real adoption can come from this when one of these merchants starts accepting bitcoin in their own wallets, motivated to understand how it works by updates like this. They'll know what it's about: a circular economy, nothing for the fiat system.
For that to happen, they need to be sovereign individuals, and that is the biggest barrier to mass adoption.
Stories like these are good regardless of the outcome; they show that it doesn't hurt to ask and that there are more people out there asking.
The only place that was on btc map in my region (and a sticker "we accept bitcoin") told me that they don't accept bitcoin...
Man, what the heck
A few days ago, I read a similar post from someone trying to pay with Bitcoin at a shop listed on BTC Map. And when they went to pay, the staff still didn’t know how to accept the sats.
Why does this happen? Who adds them to BTC Map? And why, if they’re listed there, do the staff not know how to handle payments on the Lightning Network?
I expect a lot of this in the early days.
Yes, but didn't CashApp advertise a countrywide seamless rollout?
I'd recommend asking the manager (which you did) and if they can't resolve it, send an email to CashApp's support with the business details.
If there is a feasible way to get the merchant online again, they probably will. Alternatively, they'd have to drop them from the map.
It sure is annoying, but at least that brings visibility into the issue by letting them know there's a customer who wants to use that specific advertised avenue, and was unable to complete the transaction.
this is the failure mode i keep seeing outside the bitcoin bubble, the map and the register aren't the same system. a merchant 'accepts bitcoin' only matters if the cashier can produce a clean lightning path on the spot, with no guessing, no app roulette, and no one re-explaining the flow in line. otherwise the brand promise leaks trust fast.