Luxury watchmaker Breitling starts accepting Bitcoin for purchases

[M.W.]

Funny you chose the absolute most expensive credit card merchant. True fees among Mastercard and Visa for example are closer to 1.5 percent for any but the smallest vendors.

Clearly some of you have never had a merchant account before so you have no clue how the process works.

Breitling is a retail merchant. In order for Breitling to accept Amex as a method of payment, they must have an Amex merchant account. That means they can accept Amex cards for a watch purchase, but the caveat is that Amex takes the money from the consumer for the purchase, and then they deduct 2.89% of that amount for themselves as a service fee and then they forward Breitling the rest of the money a week later. I repeat. Breitling never receives the full amount of the watch purchase. They receive the total amount minus 2.89% a week later.

So with that in mind, of course Breitling would want to accept BTC through Bitpay. Instead of paying a 2.89% transaction fee, Breitling pays a 1% transaction fee, and instead of waiting for 5 days to get their money, they get it in 2 days. It's a friggin' no-brainer.

Furthermore, aside from a direct bank-to-bank transfer, all credit cards are guess what? Digital tokens. Yep, they are essentially just digital intentions to pay a certain amount by the purchaser that ultimately require conversion into actual dollars by an intermediary. Accepting BTC by Breitling is no different than accepting credit cards aside from the fact that accepting BTC through Bitpay is cheaper and faster.

 

[deaddog]

So does your phone. Nowadays unless you are a snob, there is no point of having a wristwatch dedicated just for time. Well, maybe if you are a pilot, but who is?

I'm old. I always have a wrist watch but I don't carry my phone everywhere.

I remember a kid explaining the apple watch to me. One of the features was if you wanted to know the time you just looked at your wrist instead of having to take your phone out of your pocket. Different generations.

 

[M.W.]

I highly doubt that. Let's see once they get started what the btc price will be and what spread to fiat they will build in. I am almost 100% there will be a spread charged, not the midprice that can be transacted on an exchange. Visa and MC, however charge absolute mid point rates for foreign currency purchases. At least in my HSBC premier card.

Incorrect. The customer pays the price displayed on the website for the watch, regardless of the payment method. The chosen payment method is simply a matter of what is most convenient for that particular customer, whether it be Amex, Apple Pay, BTC, etc.

 

[M.W.]

Sure if there was one single worldwide btc price to different fiat ccys. There is not. I can show you 10 different btc/usd price feeds all tradable prices, all different. They can easily shave off many basis points by choosing the to them most advantageous exchange/price feed. Cash FX trades worldwide within single digit pip spreads. That's 1/10000 of a percent.

You don't get it. The volatility of BTC is irrelevant from both the customer and the merchant's perspective. The volatility is only a matter of concern for Bitpay, but nobody cares about them because the price fluctuation is their job to manage in return for scraping 1% off the transaction. Remember, the responsibility of Bitpay is to take the customer's BTC, scrape 1% off the top, convert the rest into dollars or euros, and then deposit that remainder in the merchant's bank account within two days.

 

[M.W.]

I agree in that it would be a huge risk for that crypto service to manage in exchange for only 1%. I don't want to be Breitling and lose 2 days of worldwide sales in case this payment processor goes tits up.

...A Breitling or whatever. It is worth 1 BTC today. You buy it for 1 BTC today.

So we do the transaction through Bitpay. We exchange the watch for 1 BTC. I the seller get 1 BTC, and you the buyer gets the watch. Bitpay gets a percentage for being the broker.

K, K, I get it. But I just cannot get around the volatility of the currency, which in this case is BTC, which is equated to fiat.

(Baron, you are so lucky, I was about to rip into you about this, but then I remembered the idea you typed above about the third-party. And I also remembered your triceps.)

 

[Baron]

I agree in that it would be a huge risk for that crypto service to manage in exchange for only 1%. I don't want to be Breitling and lose 2 days of worldwide sales in case this payment processor goes tits up.

You're being overly negative with no basis whatsoever. Again, Bitpay has been around since 2011. I think they've been through it all by this point and they are still around and doing fine.

 

[Baron]

Funny you chose the absolute most expensive credit card merchant. True fees among Mastercard and Visa for example are closer to 1.5 percent for any but the smallest vendors.

Last time I checked, 1% is still less than 1.5%.

 

[Overnight]

You're being overly negative with no basis whatsoever. Again, Bitpay has been around since 2011. I think they've been through it all by this point and they are still around and doing fine.

My mind is slowing tonight, and I keep thinking about Swatch, and Shark Tank, I have no idea why. Sorry.

 

[M.W.]

That still pales in comparison with the established payment system via credit cards. The many hacks, security flaws and other technology glitches at many exchanges and service providers and transaction points only prove that this system is anything but trustworthy.

You're being overly negative with no basis whatsoever. Again, Bitpay has been around since 2011. I think they've been through it all by this point and they are still around and doing fine.

 

[M.W.]

Yes but not the 2 or 3 percent you quoted. And the 1% you mention is only the fixed charge to the seller. The btc price they quote to the customer is for sure not a mid price average of all btc/xyz feeds but most likely a to them most advantageous quote that adds on top of the 1%

Last time I checked, 1% is still less than 1.5%.