About a year ago, I drove by a gas station that was accepting Bitcoin for gas, and giving a $0.40 per gallon discount along with it. Noticing my tank was low, I pulled into the station and completed my first Bitcoin purchase in real life.

Paying with Bitcoin was similar to paying with cash. Go inside, pay the cashier a specific amount, tell the cashier what pump you parked at, then walk back and fill up. There were a few extra steps I had to take though. I had to install a specific wallet, fill out KYC information, and transfer Bitcoin from the wallet I usually use to this separate wallet. The cashier gave me the card pictured below and told me to Rowan Pay app.

I installed the app and went through the set up process. The app was very barebones and I didn’t feel great about putting my information into it, but I did it anyway.

After signing up I deposited some Bitcoin from the wallet I normally use, then paid. I noticed this after the fact, but the merchant address doesn’t seem to be a Bitcoin address, and the QR code on the window links to the merchant address, so it does seem like the only way to pay using Bitcoin through this app.

The benefit of paying through the app is that I didn’t have to pay another transaction fee (I did have to pay one when transferring from my usual wallet to this one), and I didn’t have to wait for any transaction confirmations. There are obvious trade offs that come with this though, and hopefully something that can be solved with something like Strike.

From my usual wallet, I sent $69.43, and, as you can see in the picture on the far left, my gas station wallet ended up with $60.85, so I paid an $8.58 transaction fee. As mentioned previously, the gas station was offering a $0.40 per gallon discount, so in order to make using Bitcoin over USD worth it, I would have to be getting more than 21.2 gallons, which is actually about how much I got.

The screenshot on the far right shows that I only bought $50 worth of gas. I believe I did this because my tank wasn’t completely empty and I normally pay $60 for a full tank, but I honestly can’t remember why I didn’t send the whole $60.

Would I do this again? No. I didn’t save money, and it was a big pain to get everything set up in the gas station. I didn’t even get the privacy benefit of using Bitcoin because I had to fill out KYC information to set up the wallet. I’m glad I tested it out though.