Summary: On Obama-day here in Stockholm we were joined by Stephen Early, owner of Individual Pubs in the UK and, earlier this year, became the first pubs in the UK to offer Bitcoin as a payment option. We talk to Steve about why he decided to start offering Bitcoin payments, how the user experience is for everyone involved (Steve, staff & punters) as well as what makes a successful payment system. How can you beat the simplicity of cash? (Listening time: 50 minutes) https://soundcloud.com/uxpodcast/55-james-per-steve-buy-beer https://twitter.com/uxpodcast/status/375941741859598336 References: Daniel Pugh, DanLoFi Bitcoin buys you beer in Cambridge pubs Bitcoin Cryptocurrency Bitcoins at Individual Pubs Per's payment services presentation (in Swedish, video and slides) Photograph of Stephen, James Mossahebi/Wired/CC BY 3.0 Transcript: Per: Hello and welcome to episode 55 of UX Podcast. You’re listening to me Per Axbom. James: And me James Royal-Lawson. Per: It’s Obama Day. James: It’s Obama Day. “What’s that?” you all ask. Is it international? Do we all celebrate it? Per: Wow. James: Do we put Obama-masks on and run around and pretend to be the presidents of the United States of America? Per: No. Barack Obama, the president of the United States is now in Sweden, in Stockholm. Now he has just arrived from the airport I think. James: Yeah, about an hour ago. View the full transcript Per: Yeah. James: Now for the American listeners out there, this is probably very interesting because what happens when the president of the United States comes to your city as we found out today is they close your city down basically. Per: Yes, everything is closed. I mean it would have been impossible for me to like take the car or the bike into town today. James: Yeah. The shops and everything are open of course, we don’t mean like that but they’ve closed off a huge amount of roads in town, all the way to town and that and airports and things just so the president and all these hundreds of people can … Per: Right. So I do believe a lot of people in Stockholm are actually working from home today. James: Looking at the traffic this morning, then yes. Per: And the few people sitting outside. We’re sat in a hotel lobby near Medborgarplatsen if anyone should know where that is. James: I actually biked here. Per: Oh, yeah. How very fit you are. James: Oh, well no, but I just live this side of the road. It wasn’t too much effort. Per: And I hope the sound – well, the surrounding sound is pretty OK I can think. We’re testing the new Zoom H6 for sound as well. James: Oh, you can write about that on our kit page. Per: Yes. Finally I think I’m actually satisfied with this kit we’re using so I’m going to write about it on our blog. James: Well, today is episode 55. Per: Yes, it is. James: And we are going to talk about bitcoin. Well actually, we’re going to talk a little bit about payments and the user experience of payments and ease of payments and when you want to buy something. You did a talk last week… Per: Yes, I did for politicians and organizations and like municipalities in another part of Sweden actually and diving into that subject of payment systems, I realized that this is going off the charts, the number of different payment systems we have, what’s happening. You think they’re making them more useful. You would assume them to be making them more useful but like paying for parking, we talked about that previously. James: It’s so irritating at times. Per: It’s insane. James: It doesn’t work when you check out unfortunately for me earlier in the week and ended up making three phone calls. Per: So I’ve gone back to cash for paying parking because I pay in seconds but it takes minutes if you pay with cards. James: That’s exactly what I felt on Monday when I had that problem with that payment. The car park machine and I was thinking,
