Verifying Locations
Verify, don't trust. 🕵️
Does a location accept bitcoin?
You can verify this in a number of ways:
- visit the location in person
- phone the location
- check their website or other online sources
- ask a local in the area
- contact via social media
- send them an email
Once a location has been verified you can update the survey tags on OpenStreetMap so that the location will have a checkmark visible on BTC Map.
Below is an email template for the UK that you can use as a starting point and adapt it to contain correct information about your own local area.
Hello,
I appreciate that you are busy, so thank you for taking a couple of minutes to read and respond to this email. I'm part of a team of volunteers working on BTCmap.org - an open source map which shows all merchants which accept Bitcoin worldwide. According to OpenStreetMap data, your business accepts Bitcoin - or perhaps did so in the past!
Please can you reply to this email with the following information:
A) Yes, we still accept Bitcoin!
B) We no longer accept Bitcoin, but would be interested in accepting it in the future
C) We no longer accept Bitcoin and have no interest in accepting it in the future
Before you respond with Option C) you might want to consider that Bitcoin payments have come a long way in recent years...
- The "Lightning network" allows Bitcoin to be sent near-instantly with very low fees - you can even accept contactless Bitcoin card payments!
- Services such as CoinCorner allow you to automatically convert the Bitcoin you receive into GBP.
- There is a growing community of bitcoiners who want to spend their "sats". Accept it and they will come!
- Free and impartial advice on getting started is available from Bridge2Bitcoin.
I look forward to hearing from you soon. Happy to chat and answer any questions that you may have!
All the best,
Matt