Topic: Bitcoin debit card (Read 3832 times)

You have a couple interesting items in there.  I'm tired so I'm going to ramble. Just my two cents. This sort of crosses into my IRL job. 

The "prepaid" card loaded with BTC is a very feasible idea. It would take some custom code given how normal CC transactions have so many prebuilt tools. Perfectly do-able.

If you want to have success in brick-and-mortar though, I believe the real key is having an arbiter willing to provide insurance for the retailer against:
1. Volatility against fiat conversion rates
2. The risk of accepting BTC without a large number of confirmations.  (Can't leave the customer standing at a counter)

Other Barriers:
1. PayPal has some big pushes to get further into retail. They aren't fans of BTC. They have leverage on retailers.
2. BTC complicates an already messy space because of it's undetermined legal situation. If you were a Fortune retailer, are you going into the space wondering how the feds will react?
3. Obviously Visa and MC don't like this
4. People are distracted trying to catch up with other new forms of payment. Mobile wallets, PayPal in stores, Square... blah blah blah

Interesting trend:
Amazon is trying to get same day delivery by distributing their inventory into regional DCs. Obviously, Walmart is trying to creep into the Amazon space. Ebay is trying to squeeze between those by partnering with retailers who already have brick-and-mortar networks and use them as inventory.  They are simultaneously competing as an alternative form of payment.

Maybe I should sleep.

I wonder if people would back the creation of an extremely efficient person-to-person transfer device, it only seems logical.

Bitcoin is so valuable because it is a superior currency over existing fiat in multiple notable aspects:
-Coercion is not used in order to establish value.
-It is easily divisible.
-Decentralized and no point of failure.
-No arbitrary limits except those imposed by the majority of the miners (e.g. democracy).
-Instantly transferable overseas across the world for almost no cost.

The cons are:
-Demagogism, protection of the masses due to persons uneducated on security, most of the market can be convinced to further impose arbitrary limits (e.g. flaws inherent to humans).
-NO efficient person-to-person means of transfers.
-Risk from the government for adopters.

The first one has already been handled and breakthroughs have been achieved, natural evolution is in progress, the third one is also being tackled by activism and promoting the cryptocurrency. Tragically there is virtually no progress in the second one and USD still has the edge over BTC in that aspect, say I want to pay a dollar for a doughnut, I can simply give the bill to the vendor and be on my way eating the doughnut, a Bitcoin user on the other hand would have to pull out his phone with the official (potentially sabotaged) bitcoin app (which requires a jailbreak on iOS), scan the vendors screen, calculate the the USD value in BTC and send the vendor the BTC all while looking like a complete nerd. You would also have to:
-Have an active internet connection.
-Have a charged smartphone.
-Have the willingness to lose social value in the eyes of peers.

I have got an idea for a device down to the technical details, it would be rechargeable by hand, look very futuristic/stylish and stay fully charged more than a month at the time. I don't think the market is ripe for a Kickstarter campaign yet though  

Jeesh. Popular topic all of a sudden. Third thread on this. eCardOne.com . Really.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.2242575

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.2258916

who are the "several different people?" how many of them are out there?

Other, more important things, have been in the works.

http://www.talkbitcoins.com/talk-bitcoins/founder-of-bitinstant-accepts-bitcoins-at-his-new-york-city-bar/114/

Whatever happened to the BitInstant Mastercard?

I have not followed recently but I believe BitInstant was working on one and Bitcoin-Central said that since they are teamed with a payment processor they would be able to eventually get one out.

There was someone else in the Project Development working on a Bitcoin payment processor but that has since gone away. And there is OKPay.

You could do more than simply notify the user of the transaction amount, you could actually ask him if he's ok with the transaction. I've actually created VeriFi (https://www.veri.fi/) for this exact purpose - it's a web service that calls you on the phone and asks you a question (it could be like "Rosie's shop wants to charge you $5 for shoes, do you want to authorize this transaction?" - you would say "yes" or "ok" and the transaction would go through. If you say anything else, it doesn't.

Of course, this would require hosting the wallet somewhere or having a smartcard-based solution that only signs the transaction if the (signed) response from the server is "yes" or "ok".

I've sent an email to the guys developing the BTChip smartcard solution to see if we could work together on this somehow. I'll see what they say.

That happens automatically with some people's accounts. Every bank transaction goes straight to their text messages, so perhaps a bitcoin debit card should do the same.

Where can I see the progress of such works?

There is an indirect bitcoin card; OKPAY. I've tried their service and it's kinda nice..expect I don't like their fees but whatever.

If you get an OKPAY Debit Card, you can fund your card by sending BTC to your OKPAY account and then top-up your card with your BTC converted to fiat.

This is true, you are trusting every merchant that you give your credit card to to not steal from you.

I had a card swiper and I actually used my computer to take care of the transaction. It showed the numbers I needed and everything.

It would have been very easy to go in any day or night and just punch in more charges for anyone's credit card purchase.

However, they would get a statement saying "Heidi Jo's Boutique: $56.23, $200, $200, $500, $500, ...".

It would not be very difficult to figure out that I was stealing and track me down to get the money back and put me in jail.

As for Bitcoin debit cards. They are in the works by several different people.

The other day I was talking with my brother, explaining to him what Bitcoin is. After the explanation, he asks me if one can pay using bitcoins the same way that using a debit card. I said “No, because...”, but then I realized I don't know exactly how debit cards work.

When paying in a POS, you hand over your debit card, which then is passed through the device and then takes some amount from your account. This could only work if the debit card has some sort of key, right? If so, then how can I be sure that the key won't be stored in the POS and more money won't be taken without my permission?

People everywhere say that you should protect your Bitcoin private keys very carefully, but if I understand correctly, a debit card key has similar risks. If the POS is indeed very secure and will never store any key, could a “Bitcoin debit card” be developed and used in the same way any other debit card is used?