Topic: BitPay -- KYC is here! - page 4. (Read 1532 times)

You can switch to other payment processors that don't require KYC
https://github.com/alexk111/awesome-bitcoin-payment-processors

Feel free to also have a look at blockonomics
https://www.blockonomics.co/merchants

they've already put terms front and center saying the thresholds are subject to change. this is just a taster as they prepare for more AML regulations to come in. once governments start passing laws in line with the FATF rules, they'll bump the threshold down from $3k to $1k for sure.


the options aren't extensive. most merchants offer only bitpay as an option. egifter integrated netcents but they suck since they require 6 confirmations to release goods. bitpay at least just makes you wait for 1.

For now it's only $3k+ purchases. But soon they will start asking for it if they think anything is ""suspicious""... mark my words. Honestly, we should just show them how bad we think they are becoming by moving on to another company.

I can see why they got pissed off with Bitcoin not scaling however the option to scale has been right there waiting for them to implement yet there is zero sign of them doing it. That's in line with blockchain.com too which has Roger's fingers up it too.

Plenty of businesses dislike the thing they work with yet they make the best of it. It's clear Bcash is never going to 'win' now and Bitpay's mention of figures have always been massively Bitcoin heavy.

Dunno whether it's in grudge territory now or just bone idleness. I know they may have a sprawling back end but so do other places that did integrate Segwit and Bitpay regularly tinker/irritate.

As for KYC, buying and demanding a refund is pretty standard money laundering. I doubt they want to do it. Write to one's local politician. Nothing much Bitpay can do.

so it's only needed for purchases which are more than 3k usd? any news or infos that they are going to set this limit way more down?

According to wikipedia Roger Ver wasn't the only early bird investor. I think the general consensus amongst the backers of BitPay is mainly that they support the big blocker ideology and for that reason have an incentive to promote BCash over Bitcoin. Another option is that Roger Ver is generously rewarding them for supporting BCash, but the first option is more likely.

Bitcoiners are very much anti altcoins, and that applies to these big blockers as well, even though they support an altcoin too, because that's what BCash is. BitPay for that reason will not offer support to any other altcoin even though it might give their business a financial boost. A move I could respect if they were on our side.

Has someone around tried to use BitPay multiple times with the maximum "continue as a guest" limit? Like three purchases of $2999 each (equivalent to $8997) in a single day using the same IP address? If it works, it can help the users depositing BTC to services like Skrill/Neteller with no KYC requirement.

A company with toxic backers is a better way to phrase it. I would love to figure out what Roger and Bitmain's stake in the company is. It definitely isn't below the 50% mark collectively, otherwise they wouldn't be this authoritative.

They will do just about enough to remain compliant-- knowing how anti government Roger is, it will not be more than that. This scammer values his own ego above the success of the company he helped grow out this large.

I'm waiting for the day his shitcoin dot com site launches its own payment gateway that works similar to how BTCPay works. It's a product in line with the rest of his recently launched products and services.

I know at least one exchange outsourced their KYC and I'd prefer they all did this so that an industry wide consensus forms.     Also a company that can be modular in this way is less likely to become a victim of the peaks and troughs to crypto supply demand.   Seems like its always best for the industry to be inter connected not singular or centralised in processing customers.


They are a company with investors who see themselves as needing to protect revenue streams I think.   Regulators and the government in general can be a bit heavy handed, maybe they got the word they should do this or just guessed it was the safest route for protecting themselves vs any negatives.

I think crypto is best peer to peer if red tape and government is not wanted, its not just this sector every business that operates has to carry the burden of various rules and regulations that form pitfalls for their business plans.

Many altcoin prices declined 90-95% from their 2017-18 ATH so even if trading volumes remained steady, revenue would have declined by a similar percentage. Being an altcoin exchange (no /fiat, or /stablecoin pairs), Shapeshift would have been hit especially hard.

There was so much growth in 2017 that most exchanges were likely severely understaffed at the 2017 ATH and were understaffed for most of that year and even in the beginning of 2018.

Now it's probably on all news channels:

BitPay Now Requires Your Photo ID for Purchases Over $3K in Bitcoin


I do not think it is a very reliable service and is the first time I see this site

Here is something to look at,  . Someone with the name of Alex Kaul, https://twitter.com/alex_kaul started this campaign. And probably a lot of merchants have been looking at BTCPay Server as an alternative as well. So let's see how it goes, 


https://debitpay.directory/

I had kind of an odd thought about this. Yeah, we know KYC is coming to a lot of places and it's going to suck. But did BitPay kind of bring this on themselves by aggressively going after the gift card market and having it bite them on the ass, forcing this sooner.
Like it / don't like it, it's a fact that gift cards over the last few years have become more and more popular as a way to launder money.
And now bitpay has this  https://bitpay.com/directory/gift-cards/
I just wound up with some BTC that I want to "cash out" but don't want to convert to fiat for tax or other legal reasons. Here is a bunch of ways for me to spend it.
Want a vacation? Delta and hotels.com and uber for getting around once you get there.
Want food? At least 20+ Restaurants, uber eats, whole foods, etc.
Amazon for just about everything else.

Yes some of those are going to be somewhat trackable. (airline / hotel) some are going to be a little trackable (Amazon.) But do you really thing if I convert to a bunch of those other cards you are really going to be able to track me.

Same with some of their clients. With egifter.com I can convert to a "real" (virtual) visa card. Not a lot, it's only up to $100 and you are paying a $5.95 fee on it. But if my BTC is less then legitimate, who cares....

As I started this post with, it was coming no mater what. I think for these reasons it came sooner.

Just my view.

-Dave

Apparently it did hurt them (financially), forcing them to lay off a third of their employees:

https://medium.com/shapeshift-stories/overcoming-shapeshifts-crypto-winter-and-the-path-ahead-73f59bb8cf13

I don't see them going back on this.

This.

The entire concept of KYC in crypto is completely ridiculous when there are billion dollar banks and EMIs who don't even have access to goverment databases, (as far as i'm aware. I think equifax is the exception here.)

Yet, i should be eager to share my passport and thus very identifying information that could be misused in dozens of different ways to a *shitty* crypto startup, (for which if things go south, no one will take real responsibility.) which probably hired some junior CS student to check them, for a payment that is way less than a second-hand car.



Worse yet, analyzing their traffic it doesn't look like it hurt them that much. https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/shapeshift.io - https://www.similarweb.com/website/shapeshift.io

If we let KYC become salonfähig for companies, instead of boycotting those who implement it, they'll probably all start implementing it. Looks like that's already happening/happend.

I just tried to complete a purchase on bitpay above the threshold, and you are correct, you do not have the option to continue as a guest, and must create an account to complete KYC.


maybe, but that's a slippery statement.
[/quote]There are plenty of competitors to BitPay. No one wants to show ID to buy a $50 walmart gift card, and if they are forced to do so, they probably will not buy from the merchant using BitPay as a payment processor, so the merchant will switch to a competitor if this happens.

of course it won't. that's not what i suggested. i said they will probably mandate accounts eventually and remove the option to transact as a guest. you can't KYC as a guest anyway---if the threshold is triggered, you need to create an account. bitpay says this is a one-time verification which implies it must be linked to an account.


maybe, but that's a slippery statement. i mean, why are they enforcing KYC for using bitpay's payouts API in any amount? the FATF travel rule doesn't require that and to boot, virtually no law in the world does.

bitpay is obviously terrified of regulators and are highly likely to go above and beyond their perceived obligations. in fact, they already have. i think it's crazy to assume they won't lower the current KYC thresholds or combine multiple orders in your account history to trigger it. their biggest priority is covering their ass legally---that's a much bigger priority than minimizing KYC.

i remember people used to think shapeshift would never bend over for regulators. then overnight one day, we had mandatory accounts and KYC.

My understanding is the prompt will only appear if the transaction size exceeds the threshold mandating KYC collection. I understand you can create an account that holds your KYC information so all you need to do is login to proceed with the transaction and the continue as a guest button will allow you to enter your KYC information on a one time basis— I don’t think using this button will allow you to bypass KYC.

BitPay will only collect KYC information to the extent that they have to. Every time they collect KYC, they might not be able to close the sale which means less revenue for them. You might be correct in that customers may eventually have to create an account to buy anything from a merchant using BitPay, but they have given no indication this is coming. I don’t see any real advantage to requiring customers create an account, except for compliance with regulations, so I don’t see them forcing users to create an account until their regulators strong arm them to.

they will via account login. this "continue as guest" button won't be around forever. i'm sure having an account will be mandatory at some point. so you'd have to juggle multiple accounts with VPN and hope to dodge their algorithms for triggering KYC or detecting multi-accounters, which would probably work at least for a time. but they will also be clocking users with other conventional analysis to mitigate compliance risk: exchanging customer information with merchants, logging IP addresses, browser analysis, all manner of other leaked PII.

it's not like they need to prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt. it's the opposite. they will just have various forms of risk analysis to cut off risky customers who seem to be dodging their terms. multi-accounting will definitely be against their terms once accounts are mandatory.

will it be possible to get around this? sure, with some common sense and effort. but most people are sheep and will just voluntarily give up their KYC.

This is almost certainly never going to happen.

The process for confirming KYC information is to verify the information prior to the transaction being initiated, so they will have no way of knowing if your history meets the threshold to require them to have verified your KYC information.

I strongly suspect that they are under scrutiny from various regulators being the largest bitcoin payment processor, and this change is probably to appease a regulator somewhere.