After securing $1.5 million in funding, SNAPCARD is making a bold move to rapidly increase merchant adoption of digital currencies.
Through its "Integrate SF" campaign, the first 500 merchants to sign up will receive free hardware to enable their acceptance of Bitcoin . The "merchant pack" includes an Android tablet and SNAPCARD merchant app, to function as a bitcoin point of sale (POS) terminal. In addition, the merchants will not be charged any transaction fees- forever. The company would normally charge 0.5%.
Those signing up will also benefit from a variety of physical marketing materials (bitcoin stickers, table tent, window vinyl), as well as digital marketing to digital currency users.
With apparently nothing to lose, merchants will have little reason to hesitate. SNAPCARD can then easily make good on its earlier promise to soon announce merchant partnerships.
The campaign message also displays the logos of other leading digital currencies such as Litecoin, Dogecoin and Ripple .
San Francisco is already one of the leading centers for digital currency startups and activity. SNAPCARD hopes that through its campaign, it will turn the hub into the "first bitcoin city".
This particular campaign is not designed to net revenues. It appears that their strategy is to invest heavily in creating a bitcoin ecosystem, and eventually monetize it when appropriate. While this has been the approach taken by many other major industry players, one notes the large magnitude of resources poured into the campaign at zero cost to merchants.
Merchants can sign up until November 15.
