How to accept Bitcoin, for small businesses.

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How to accept Bitcoin, for small businesses.
It has been suggested that this article is merged with Merchant Howto.
This guide is intended for small business owners who wish to help promote Bitcoin by accepting it as payment for goods and services. It's written with the assumption that you operate a regular business that sells goods or services for regular national currency such as dollars, and that you wish to accept Bitcoin as another legal way to pay, and that you intend to pay taxes on your Bitcoin income just like any other income.
With Bitcoin being touted as a way to conduct anonymous transactions and as way to compete with government currency, many small business owners wonder what's the right way to accept and account Bitcoin, or if it's legal or ethical, or whether and how they should pay taxes on income received through Bitcoin.
Bitcoin has been formally recognized by some governments and authorities as a "currency", but in practice, Bitcoin is no different than accepting payment in other forms such as cash or gold or scrip or gift cards or foreign currency. We think that it is pretty much the same as the local businesses of Great Barrington, Massachusetts choosing to accept their locally-printed "Berkshire Bucks" to support their local economy.
Contents.
1 Starting to accept Bitcoin for transactions 2 Start with a sign 3 Accepting Payment 4 Smart Phone or Tablet 5 Accounting 6 Businesses that offer gift cards 7 Businesses that mail invoices 8 Avoiding fraud 9 Setting Prices 10 Contract 11 Paying taxes on Bitcoin income 12 See Also.
Starting to accept Bitcoin for transactions.
Accepting Bitcoin at a small business is best started in whichever manner keeps the accounting simple for you. This will vary by the type of business you are operating.
Start with a sign.
If you expect that the number of people interested in using Bitcoin is small, you might simply start by posting a sign or a note: "We Accept Bitcoin", and ask people to contact you directly in order to make a payment. Even if hardly anybody uses Bitcoin as a payment method, you're helping Bitcoin in two ways: one, by increasing awareness, and two, by making your customers more willing to accept Bitcoin as payment from others in the future, because now they know somewhere they can spend it.
Accepting Payment.
If you sell things in a brick and mortar shop, customers can pay using hardware terminals, touch screen apps or simple wallet addresses through QR Codes.
For an online website, accepting Bitcoin should be implemented by a competent programmer and you should run a full node, especially if you sell larger-ticket items.
Smart Phone or Tablet.
You can use a dedicated app or webapp that generates a QR code on the fly including the amount. Many wallets directly support QR code scanning for payment.