So the other day I posted this about Wix & BitPay partnering to allow Wix customers to take
BTC / crypto payments.
As we know, BitPay is not that great a company when it comes to
BTC in general.
As a general feeing some people here like them, some hate them.
When someone who does not like them @o_e_l_e_o stated they would not use any merchant that uses BitPay I asked what they told the merchant.
Yes. In my template "I'm not using you because of BitPay email", I include links to why I refuse to use BitPay (
https://debitpay.directory/anti-bitcoin/) and to alternative solutions (
https://github.com/alexk111/awesome-bitcoin-payment-processors). In my experience, the small independent vendors or merchants, in which the merchant themselves is actually reading the email at least show interest and are often unaware about why BitPay is such a terrible choice. However, the larger companies where you are talking to someone in customer support just send back a template "We are sorry we have lost your business" or similar email.
I am only touching on the custodial / hosted ones for now because I am assuming merchants using BitPay just want fiat.
The problem is IMO that *some* of those vendors listed on their BEST day are WORSE then BitPay on their WORST day.
It's not just the customer facing crap. It's the not just the back end and the pricing. It's not the fact that I can get BitPay up and running on a clients site faster then I can get though most others signup since the signup process on BitPay is quick & simple. It's not that the conversion to fiat and deposit is faster on then most others. It's all of that combined.
And lets talk about the conversion rate.
I spent the last hour (before starting this post) looking around for different merchants taking
BTC and faking a sale to get to the payment screen see what the
BTC -> fiat price was. I prepped everything and then went back till all were ready and then went to the payment screen.
As of then:
BTC pricing:
Preev = $61,130
Coinbase = $61,148
BitPay = $61,115
Coinpayments.net = $61,001
CoinGate = $61,055
globee = $61,109 (FYI the gitbub link page is wrong their fee is
1.96%)
nowpayments = $60,505 (WTF?
)
How many of us look at preev and then at the payment gateway and whip out our credit card instead of taking that small pricing hit.
Some of them I could not find merchants that use them.
Others seem to be out of business or the links on the page are dead (strike).
Others are just well, scummy confirmo is hiding fees upon fees. getting paid has a fee of .8 to accept a payment BUT when they send it there is a 14EUR fee and another 1/2 a percent. Kind of fucks up that $99 sale. (
https://confirmo.net/pricing and then click payout pricing)
So that is IMO a tough sell for people. When I saw the nowpayments price I thought something was wrong and tried again. Nope, same price.
With the fees that globee charges it's tough to justify to someone who needs / wants to convert to fiat to use them instead of BitPay
So lets move to the hosted ones.
Blockonomics no longer converts to fiat, Payscrypt never converted to fiat, Bittery.io deos have working send to an exchange but that's it you have to do it yourself or hope for the best.
OOPS, guess you really can't get fiat that easily.
Remember, we are not talking about tech businesses here. Just general online ones that want to accept
BTC / crypto.
Even if they have more control doing it themselves takes some time and effort and knowledge. That they may not have. If they hire people there is another expense.
Now, lets move onto some other BitPay news I posted about a while ago:
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210928005348/en/BitPay-and-Verifone-Partner-to[%E2%80%A6]rrency-Acceptance-on-Payment-Terminals-and-In-
AppeCommerce
So now at the RETAIL POS side you are going to have merchants having the ability to just show you a QR code and you pay with crypto.
BUT, comes the argument BitPay is bad. Once again, yes it is. Followed by, and what are the odds of a NON TECH merchant adding a 2nd payment platform with a separate back end and more accounting work to be done to reconcile payments from another source? I'm going with 0.
Now it comes back to customers.
What works best for us. I have a bunch of domains at namesilo
They take
BTC though themselves they also take
BTC and other cryptos through BitPay and take credit cards.
My credit card that I use there gives me 3.1% cash back on internet purchases.
Quiz: Does Dave use
BTC or a credit card there?
I will not use any store that charges a credit card fee. You can get me once if I missed seeing it on the door, but I am never coming back. *Unless the CC that I am going to use is giving a larger % back then their fee. But the cost of taking credit cards is part of the cost of doing business. Do you really think that these places that charge to use a CC are going to take your
BTC for free?
So, I just presented this mess of what the situation is IMO. For now, merchants want / need fiat and are going to do whatever it takes to get as much of it as easily and as cost effectively as possible. Complaining about BitPay is great, but what are we doing to provide a REAL solution for it.
because tl;dr
1) Most merchants want fiat.
2) Most merchants don't want to deal with getting crypto and taking the time and expense of converting it to fiat.
3) Most of the other crypto -> fiat gateways suck (IMO)
Do we as a group go after the better platforms and tell them to get their heads out of their asses and give better rates and easier signups?
Do we pick on the lesser of 2 evils and promote another big player?
Something else?
Note: I did not touch on BitPay evil /KYC thing because I am a realist and know that some of their larger investors are major public companies who would rather pull their funding then worry about some government agency crawling up BiyPay's ass because they ran $58 of through their gateway that came from some ransomeware scam.
As for the rest of the
https://debitpay.directory/anti-bitcoin/ links, there are some things that are true others that are just BS. If you want to discuss it, ping out or open another thread I will discuss. I just think at times it's easy to complain about them and not have a good replacement.
Enjoy the rest of the weekend.
-Dave