Topic: Bitcoin & Payment processors :-< - page 2. (Read 345 times)

this issue is triple edged.

first its that the merchants manager has not learned about the true reason for bitcoin to want to keep or use bitcoin after getting it. i know that most merchants have costs such as labour, stock, leases, advertising. but theres still a small percentage they could decide to keep as coin for the managers own personal investment if they knew about its other benefits

second these payment systems are atleast helping businesses take a to dip into the bitcoin water. to try it, accept it without the hassle of self converting, without the headache of calculating exchanges. its then that the next phase occurs. such as getting staff of the merchant to want the btc the merchant gets. and suppliers and the leaseholder of the property. to keep the coin cycling in circulation away from exchanges

thirdly other things could be done where the merchant could set up an ATM where their own customers could buy BTC at the local store,

but over all (ignoring its a currency) as a payment method "we accept paypal" "we accept applepay" is just the same gimmick. a merchant doesnt want to use paypal/apple funds to spend within paypal(ebay) or within apple(apple store) they just want to get a wire transfer of bank account fiat.
so the merchant needs to learn that bitcoin (a protocol) is also btc (a currency). but thats the learning curve and finding reasons to want it much like an american store accepting euro's. they know its a currency but they just accept euros as just a gimmick to get a different niche community to come in their store and need a reason to want to keep euros/btc

My friend they already refined the software to be much faster than it was before with SegWit, but the payment processors are

still working on a 10 min confirmation time and this is sometimes too quick to get even 1 confirmation. Compared to credit

card payments that are almost instant, Bitcoin is lacking. (Yes, I know the credit card tx is not actually done, after you swiped

it, but the merchant still accept that) 

I don't blame the merchants for those decisions. It is up for the bitcoin team to work hard and shorten transaction time and it is my believe that this will lead to more adoption of bitcoin as a payment method.

Even ICO projects which accepts payment in top cryptocurrency like bitcoin and Ethereum also convert it to fiat to clear their overhead. Although it's quite different as the accept other forms of payment as opposed to the bitcoin payment processor used by merchants. They are understandably trying to avoid the fluctuation problem.

It also gives you an opportunity to make purchases offline with bitcoin.
And people woupdnbe be interested in the sign at the door, so it's a form of publicity. It is just a small step in the right direction.

bitcoin should be an alternative to p2p payment, but in my opinion bitcoin is very inefficient if transacted in the real world or face-to-face transactions, bitcoin is more efficient when transacted in the digital world or cyberspace because in my opinion bitcoin is for digital and fiat for real

Could be quite possible for those really small stores on 3rd world countries that are exempted from taxes, but beyond that, I don't think so. The taxes itself would probably be a huge pain to deal with. I'm pretty sure they're going to prefer 1-2% of payment processor fees compared to potentially losing 10% in a day.

But hey. I'm pretty sure there are merchants out there that directly accepts bitcoin. I assume the percentage is >20% though. As much as I don't like that these payment processors are frequently being used by merchants that accepts bitcoin, I don't think there's anything we can do buy wait for now. Hopefully someday in the future. I just hope it's not beyond our timeline.

I was more thinking about the smaller merchants that has to pay a fee for the processing of these transactions by these

payment processors. If they accepted bitcoins directly, they will not have to pay a payment processor additional fees to

use their services and the customers will also benefit from that. I know they started accepting bitcoin, because they want to

support all new payment options and also because it is only about profits for them, but I want this to change. 

This merchants as you know aren't investors of the bitcoin neither are they in business to promote the bitcoin,they are simply after their day to day profits.You really should not expect them to hold bitcoins considering they could incur a huge loss or a huge profit,its simply a two way thing..

 Payment through a processor may not be something to celebrate much about,but dont you think it's a considerable improvement as merchants are now aware that a huge number of the populace own bitcoins,we could celebrate the fact that it's popularity is spreading far and wide..

While I'll definitely love a direct payment with the bitcoin,i doubt it's conceivable for now considering how volatile the bitcoin is

@mjglqw hit the nail on the coffin. These merchants are only in business, for one thing, which is to make a profit. They want to grab the attention of as many customers as they can and unfortunately right now, BTC users/owners are just a potential customer/client for them. They don't care about the technology yet. They are in so that they can stay one step ahead of their competition.

@Kprawn Exactly, Things like Lightning network will help but it won't change the fact that these businesses want to ensure that they make their profit. Until the issue of 'volatility' is solved. These payment processors will only thrive.

Though the volatility could definitely work in their favor, I think it's just that they'd rather not risk having losses. Regardless if they're bullish on bitcoin or not. I personally don't think these types of payment processors are going anywhere soon though, even if lightning network gets adopted. If anything, probably the best case scenario is that LN will be implemented in these payment processors just to increase transaction speed. As long as bitcoin's price in volatile, I think payment processors that auto-sell to fiat are still going to exist. I think the only way they're going to be useless and irrelevant is when bitcoin get's significantly adopted, with very high market liquidity and all that. Basically when bitcoin isn't that volatile anymore.

Ok, I understand that the volatility might be an issue and losses might be huge if they are processing 1000's of tx's per day,

but these smaller merchants does not need that. (In some instances the volatility count in their favour, if the price went up)

I just hope that the Lightning Network will eliminate the need for Payment processors, because payment is done instantly

and volatility will have no influence.  

It's not necessarily the case with all services though. Overstock for example is keeping bitcoin payments. Besides, the average user doesn't necessarily know that, so knowing that there is a use case for bitcoin, that could bring more people to the crypto scene.

Sooner or later and with bitcoin growing more, they'll realize that bitcoin is worth holding to and they could simply run BTCPayServer on their own instead of paying a third party service to do so for them.

I'm still quite undecided on my opinions about those merchants that accepts BTC through payment processors like BitPay. I think it's fine though. I don't think it's something to celebrate about, but at the same time it shouldn't be something we should frown upon. Though unfortunately the BTC automatically converts to fiat, well at least some bitcoin users has an option to pay with BTC? To be honest I really don't blame the merchants though. If they we're accepting something that's like as stable as gold in terms of price volatility, then I'm pretty sure a good number would be willing to accept bitcoin straight off. But because of the price volatility, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't want to risk losing their profit by significant percentages by holding bitcoin.

These payment processors along with bitcoin debit cards are sort of "bandage" solutions for bitcoin adoption today. It simply just allows people to use their BTC. But as time goes and adoption increases(hopefully), these services will be irrelevant in the future. Just my 2 satoshis.

The original idea with Bitcoin was supposed to be a alternative P2P payment network....Right?

The other day, I happen to walk into a food merchant and they had a "Bitcoin Accepted here" sticker plastered onto the

window, but on further inquiry they said that they only accept it, if payment was done via a specific payment processor. They

do this because they are only interested in the converted fiat and not in the Bitcoin and the customers have to be identified via

this service.  (Also a auditors requirement) 

This is not real Bitcoin adoption and adds no value for Bitcoin, so why do we celebrate this, when merchants do this?


I also used one of these payment processors to buy something on a ecommerce site and they have a 10 minute countdown for

your transaction to confirm, if this does not happen within that 10 minutes... you are offered a refund to the Bitcoin address of

your choice. (I lost a 45% discount on a purchase that was only valid for a day, because my transaction confirmation took

longer than the required 10 minutes.) 

What do you think about this?