Survey Results: One-Fourth of Bitcoin Merchants Enjoy 10% Sales Boost

In the first installment of our merchant survey, we uncovered that the majority – 59% – of merchants are accepting bitcoin to better support the bitcoin ecosystem. However, the bigger takeaway from this statistic is that the main driver of bitcoin adoption is not its cost-cutting benefits when compared to traditional financial tools.

While bitcoin benefits from adding like-minded merchants to the ecosystem, the true expansion of bitcoin as a currency and payment method will likely rest on convincing those who may not believe fully in bitcoin’s underlying political motivations and ideology.

As such, it’s arguable that the most important question when it comes to merchant expansion is, if the savings bitcoin provides isn’t a major factor: Do merchants that accept bitcoin see a sales increase for doing so? And if so, do they make enough to convince those who might have reservations about joining the movement?

To date, we know that major retailers are achieving this result. Online retail giant Overstock topped $1m in sales in just under two months of accepting bitcoin, and TigerDirect followed suit, passing this milestone in a similar timeframe.

What isn’t clear, though, is if smaller and mid-size merchants are achieving similar results.

25% attribute more than 10% of their monthly sales to bitcoin

In total, our survey found that 24.5% – or roughly one-fourth – of respondents indicated that more than 10% of monthly sales are attributable to bitcoin purchases.

It’s important to note that an unknown number of these respondents are likely bitcoin-only businesses, but that we do know that some merchants are achieving similar results even when accepting fiat currency.

The majority of merchants (56%), however, say that bitcoin is attributable to 0% to 2% of their total monthly sales. Though, it should be noted that Part One of our survey showed half of respondents have only been accepting bitcoin for under three months, meaning this figure may be due to the initial bump in sales most merchants report.

44% say it’s ‘very easy’ to accept bitcoin

The survey also asked merchants to rate how difficult it was to start accepting bitcoin, and in the process debunked a long-standing myth that accepting bitcoin is an onerous process.

Overall, 42.7% said it was ‘very easy’ to begin accepting bitcoin, while an additional 35.39% said it was ‘easy’. Just 1.12% reported that it was ‘difficult’ to begin accepting the digital currency.

On a scale of one to 10, with 10 representing the highest difficulty, respondents, on average, reported that accepting bitcoin had a difficulty level of 2.

ClearGate & CIEO

Bitcoin Merchant Services