Bitcoin wallet Reader
Bitcoin, future, such e-currency! Sounds great, but how to get your first bitcoins? Unless you are keen to run a small super-computer to roll your own, you will need to buy them somewhere. One way of doing so is using an online exchange. You will have to pass several steps of verification and there might be days of waiting time for bank transfers to come through. Boring! Oh, and the exchange might decide to “temporarily” halt withdrawals for a while -or forever. Where is the fun in that?
A much faster way is purchasing bitcoins in person, which is done in minutes, but can involve handing over of large amounts of cash. Ever went on the metro with 10k EUR in your pocket to meet a stranger? You should try it some time. Not.
Using a Bitcoin ATM saves the hassle of withdrawing cash first, but those ATMs are only available in very few locations in the world. Fancy a trip to Wrocław or Seoul? That’s where a portable solution comes in. It can be brought to a Bitcoin meet-up, a conference or a meeting arranged via LocalBitcoins, and curious people can instantly buy some (micro) bitcoins to get started:
- Merchant opens Bitcoin ATM app on their phone
- Customer enters desired amount and destination Bitcoin address
- Customer inserts credit or debit card in reader, confirms and pays
- Bitcoins are sent from merchant’s wallet to customer’s Bitcoin address
- Merchant collects funds from their account with payment provider
Value for Merchant
The merchant takes a small fee for their service, either a percentage of the transaction or a fixed amount. No handling of cash is involved. Just like physical goods, bitcoins are traded at different prices on different markets. So in addition to income from fees the merchant can engage in arbitrage by securing a cheap source for bitcoins, for example by buying in bulk from a miner, and sell in a market that don’t have easy access to online exchanges.
payworks and Pocket Bitcoin ATM
payworks supplies the mPOS SDK (software library) enabling in-app payments via a Chip & PIN card reader (in this case the Miura Shuttle was used) and the payment processing back-end. An open-source Bitcoin wallet and the bitcoinj library are used by the Bitcoin ATM app to initiate Bitcoin transactions once a successful payment is registered.
Team Pocket Bitcoin ATM
Meinhard Benn is an independent software developer and social entrepreneur consulting companies working with open-source software. After shoestring travelling over 40 countries for more than 10 years Meinhard is now based in Berlin and working for a Bitcoin start-up.
