Hackney pub the first to introduce Bitcoin

Stephen Early, owner of the Pembury Tavern in east London, introduced the virtual currency at the beginning of the month and said it is quicker, easier and provides much less scope for human error than card payments.

Instead of using a card reader machine, requiring staff to enter the payment value and customers to put in their pin, buyers can scan the QR code straight from the till with a Bitcoin wallet app on their phones.

Early said: “Bitcoin doesn’t require any manual effort. It eliminates the sort of mistakes that occur when typing numbers into the card reader on a busy night - everything adds up perfectly at the end of the day.”

Early began using Bitcoin in 2011 as an “experiment” but soon realised the coins were worth 20 times what he paid for them.

“The £100 I spent was worth about £2000 but there was nothing I could really do with it, so I thought I could exchange them for beer,” he continued.

Early began testing Bitcoin in his pub on 23 May using his own currency and received his first Bitcoin payment from a third party on 1 June. In the first two weeks he received about £750 worth of Bitcoins and this Sunday he earned £350 worth.

He now accepts the currency across the five pubs he owns throughout the country but it is most popular in the Hackney venue.

“It’s not really for the man in the street - it’s more for people who happen to have Bitcoins and don’t know what to do with them,” he said. “It’s been popular in Hackney because there’s a young, hip and techie crowd there. There’s only been one transaction in Norwich, there have been a few in Cambridge, it really depends on the customers.

“Would I recommend it to other landlords? Maybe. It doesn’t cost anything to have the facility but I expect once the novelty value has warn off less people will use it.”

The Pembury Tavern is the first UK pub to accept the currency but the tender is used in several restaurants and bars in Berlin.

While Early said it is unlikely Bitcoin will ever become the pub’s major method of transaction he would like to see card readers being used in a similar way.

“The issue of card machines is really frustrating,” he said. “If someone could introduce equipment that could use the value straight from the till without staff having to copy it across manually that would save me a lot of money. It clearly exists - chains like JD Wetherspoon use it - but if someone was willing to sell that sort of equipment to a pub of my size, well that would be great.”