Bitcoin is an innovative payment network and a new kind of money.
How to use Bitcoin
1. Inform yourself
Bitcoin is different than what you know and use every day. Before you start using Bitcoin, there are a few things that you need to know in order to use it securely and avoid common pitfalls.
2. Choose your wallet
You can bring a Bitcoin wallet in your everyday life with your mobile or you can have a wallet only for online payments on your computer. In any case, choosing your wallet can be done in a minute.
3. Get Bitcoin
You can get Bitcoin by accepting it as a payment for goods and services. There are also several ways you can buy Bitcoin.
4. Spend Bitcoin
There is a growing number of services and merchants accepting Bitcoin all over the world. You can use Bitcoin to pay them and rate your experience to help honest businesses to gain more visibility.
Find merchants and products
How to accept Bitcoin
1. Inform yourself
Bitcoin does not require merchants to change their habits. However, Bitcoin is different than what you know and use every day. Before you start using Bitcoin, there are a few things that you need to know in order to use it securely and avoid common pitfalls.
2. Processing payments
You can process payments and invoices by yourself or you can use merchant services and deposit money in your local currency or bitcoins. Most point of sales businesses use a tablet or a mobile phone to let customers pay with their mobile phones.
3. Accounting and taxes
Merchants often deposit and display prices in their local currency. In other cases, Bitcoin works similarly to a foreign currency. To get appropriate guidance regarding tax compliance for your own jurisdiction, you should contact a qualified accountant.
4. Gaining visibility
There is a growing number of users searching for ways to spend their bitcoins. You can submit your business in online directories to help them easily find you. You can also display the Bitcoin logo on your website or your brick and mortar business.
Bitcoin uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority or banks; managing transactions and the issuing of bitcoins is carried out collectively by the network. Bitcoin is open-source; its design is public, nobody owns or controls Bitcoin and everyone can take part. Through many of its unique properties, Bitcoin allows exciting uses that could not be covered by any previous payment system.
Bitcoin for Individuals
Bitcoin is the simplest way to exchange money at very low cost.
Mobile payments made easy
Bitcoin on mobiles allows you to pay with a simple two step scan-and-pay. No need to sign up, swipe your card, type a PIN, or sign anything. All you need to receive Bitcoin payments is to display the QR code in your Bitcoin wallet app and let your friend scan your mobile, or touch the two phones together (using NFC radio technology).
Security and control over your money
Bitcoin transactions are secured by military grade cryptography. Nobody can charge you money or make a payment on your behalf. So long as you take the required steps to protect your wallet, Bitcoin can give you control over your money and a strong level of protection against many types of fraud.
Works everywhere, anytime
Just like with email, you don't need to ask your family to use the same software or the same service providers. Just let them stick to their own favorites. No problem there; they are all compatible as they use the same open technology. The Bitcoin network never sleeps, even on holidays!
Fast international payments
Sending bitcoins across borders is as easy as sending them across the street. There are no banks to make you wait three business days, no extra fees for making an international transfer, and no special limitations on the minimum or maximum amount you can send.
Choose your own fees
There is no fee to receive bitcoins, and many wallets let you control how large a fee to pay when spending. Most wallets have reasonable default fees, and higher fees can encourage faster confirmation of your transactions. Fees are unrelated to the amount transferred, so it's possible to send 100,000 bitcoins for the same fee it costs to send 1 bitcoin.
Protect your identity
With Bitcoin, there is no credit card number that some malicious actor can collect in order to impersonate you. In fact, it is even possible to send a payment without revealing your identity, almost like with physical money. You should however take note that some effort can be required to protect your privacy.
Bitcoin for Businesses
Bitcoin is a very secure and inexpensive way to handle payments.
Choose your own fees
There is no fee to receive bitcoins, and many wallets let you control how large a fee to pay when spending. Most wallets have reasonable default fees, and higher fees can encourage faster confirmation of your transactions. Fees are unrelated to the amount transferred, so it's possible to send 100,000 bitcoins for the same fee it costs to send 1 bitcoin.
Protection against fraud
Any business that accepts credit cards or PayPal knows the problem of payments that are later reversed. Chargeback frauds result in limited market reach and increased prices, which in turn penalizes customers. Bitcoin payments are irreversible and secure, meaning that the cost of fraud is no longer pushed onto the shoulders of the merchants.
Fast international payments
Sending bitcoins across borders is as easy as sending them across the street. There are no banks to make you wait three business days, no extra fees for making an international transfer, and no special limitations on the minimum or maximum amount you can send.
No PCI compliance required
Accepting credit cards online typically requires extensive security checks in order to comply with the PCI standard. Bitcoin still requires you to secure your wallet and your payment requests. However, you do not carry the costs and responsibilities that come with processing sensitive information from your customers like credit card numbers.
Get some free visibility
Bitcoin is an emerging market of new customers who are searching for ways to spend their bitcoins. Accepting them is a good way to get new customers and give your business some new visibility. Accepting a new payment method has often shown to be a clever practice for online businesses.
Multi-signature
Bitcoin also includes a multi-signature feature which allows bitcoins to be spent only if a subset of a group of people authorize the transaction. This can be used by a board of directors to prevent any member to make expenditures without enough consent from other members, as well as to track which members allowed each payment.
Accounting transparency
Many organizations are required to produce accounting documents about their activity. Using Bitcoin allows you to offer the highest level of transparency since you can provide information your members can use to verify your balances and transactions. Non-profit organizations can also allow the public to see how much they receive in donations.
Bitcoin for Developers
Bitcoin can be used to build amazing things or just answer common needs.
The simplest of all payment systems
Unless payment needs to be associated with automatic invoices, accepting money is as simple as sending a bitcoin: link or displaying a QR code. This simple setup is within reach of any user and can fulfill the needs of a good range of clients. When done publicly, it is especially suitable for transparent donations and tips.
Many third party APIs
There are many third party payment processing services that provide APIs; you don't need to store bitcoins on your server and handle the security that this implies. Additionally, most of these APIs allow you to process invoices and exchange your bitcoins into your local currency at competitive costs.
You can be your own financial system
If you don't use any third party APIs, you can integrate a Bitcoin node directly into your applications, allowing you to become your own bank and payment processor. With all the responsibilities that this implies, you can build amazing systems that process Bitcoin transactions however you would like.
Bitcoin addresses to track invoices
Bitcoin creates a unique address for each transaction. So if you were to build a payment system associated with an invoice, you simply need to generate and monitor a Bitcoin address for each payment. You should never use the same address for more than one transaction.
Most of the security is on client side
Most security is handled by the protocol, eliminating the need for PCI compliance. Fraud prevention can be simplified down to monitoring a single variable: the confirmation score. Beyond that, keeping your bitcoins secure is mainly a matter of securing your wallet and using HTTPS or other secure protocols to send payment requests to customers.
New payment possibilities
Bitcoin allows you to design new and creative online services that couldn't exist before because of financial limitations. This includes tipping systems, automated payment solutions, distributed crowd-funding services, time locked payment management, public asset tracking, low-trust escrow services, micro-payment channels, and more.
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For more information Visit https://bitcoin.org
