[Please note: As of December 2017, Marvin have removed the option to pay with bitcoin 🙁 ]
There aren’t many options to use bitcoin day to day in Ireland, and while we have covered some of the shops like GSM Solutions which does electronics repairs, and Busyfeet & Coco where you can get some food and drink if you’re in Dublin, there have been few options elsewhere to spend bitcoin locally. However, that’s recently changed with Irish takeaway service Marvin including bitcoin as a payment option for a wide range of takeaways across the country. While not as big yet as their main competitor, we thought we’d give it a go to turn some of our bitcoin into a tasty meal.
Marvin is a takeaway service which allows you to order food from a wide variety of places. Registering is straightforward, and their site has some nifty little features and filters which make ordering pretty hassle free. I keyed in my location in Dublin 3, and had a good selection of places in my area to choose from. I picked a Chinese restaurant nearby I hadn’t tried before. Selecting food is simple, as there is a in-menu search which lets you narrow down the food you’re looking for. When ordering meal deals, you are given options for the different items in the package, and brought to the checkout.
Here, they have the normal payment options such as cash and cards, but bitcoin is also available to choose from. Also, as a nice extra, there is no card fee when paying by bitcoin, saving 50c on an order. You just need to enter in a bitcoin wallet address, and it brings you to the next screen where you are presented with the bitcoin amount required. A simple click on the link or scan of your QR code to send the transaction, and within a few seconds the payment confirmed screen comes up.
It then brings you to the next screen showing your order, but one little difference than paying by card is that it will need to wait for a couple of network confirmations before the order will be processed. When it did, I got a SMS as well as an email telling me the order was on the way. About half an hour I got a ring on the doorbell, and the food arrived which was pretty nice.
So the process in paying with bitcoin with Marvin was straightforward enough, and bar the inevitable network confirmation delay, which maybe added twenty minutes to the order time, their integration of bitcoin payments was fluid, worked, and led to a tasty meal 🙂
