Topic: Seamless ecommerce sell to credit cards & receive Bitcoin? - page 3. (Read 4344 times)

Registering domains can't accept 0 confirmations. So many other examples where 0 confirmations are not acceptable.

But I also think you are technically incorrect. Bitpay and the merchant have no way to know that localbitcoins sent the payment until the 1 confirmation is seen on the block chain (unless localbitcoins and Bitpay have a collaboration or Bitpay is sniffing transactions at major pools).

You must be lucky to be using a very integrated wallet and merchant collaboration. I don't think most naive users would see your experience.

That is up to the merchant as I understand it, and the ones I've used all accepted zero confirms as soon as the transaction was "seen" on the blockchain p2p. Just a few seconds as I said. That's perfectly safe for goods and services that aren't delivered immediately at high cost. I found Bitpay's interface to be quite customer-friendly, if the customer already has Bitcoins.

Initially you said I should give up and go directly to being a KYC slave (you perhaps not realizing that I no longer have a residence identification in the USA to comply with the Patriot Act which stated the address on your id or utility bill with your name has to match the address of residence claimed, nor do I have "official" residence where I currently reside, so myself jumping through KYC hoops in terms of a merchant account (which I used to have obviously) is not so simple for me at the moment).

So for me the issue may be the ability to start or not start a business quickly. I would obviously choose the former (given my current time and financial constraints).

Then I pointed out some of the paradigm shifts involved, so you've apparently morphed your understanding, which is great. Admitting when you've learned from someone else is a sign of mutual respect. I think I've done the same in public when I've learned from you.

I was slightly astonished by the deaf reaction to my attempt to try to light a fire under some ways to drive adoption. I am starting to really lean towards Bitcoin's community is suffering from lackadaisical ("ho hum, oh that's just the way it is") leaders who lack vision and the ability to think outside-the-box and push some significant paradigm shifts.

Just to give you an example of the outrageous bullshit Paypal does. I sold some BTC on localbitcoins and the seller of BTC deposited to  my Paypal account using a stolen Paypal account. So the transaction was reversed. Then Paypal restricted my account (which I opened a decade or more ago) and requested I jump through additional verification hoops which I can not complete because I don't have the documents they requested and can't obtain them. I used to use my Paypal account for many things, and now I am unable too. Whose ongoing loss is that? (theirs, mine, and the entire global economy as this KYC overkill mayonnaise spreads like a plague)

The system is effectively shutting out a very talented developer who can drive $millions in GDP (and much more than that in the butterfly fan out effect).


Bitpay's screen does a timeout for 10 minutes waiting for 1 block chain confirmation. The naive customer shits there wondering WTF. Then sometimes (quite often in my experience) the 10 minutes times out because the 1 confirmation didn't happen. So Bitpay says the transaction is aborted, but the payment was already sent by the customer, so the customer ends up lost having paid but not knowing how to get the confirmation from Bitpay that payment was received. I've learned that I can save the prior URL before Bitpay redirects to the timeout URL and then reload that after 30 minutes or so and get the confirmation from Bitpay. But naive non programmers would never figure that out.

That is the most piece of shit system I've ever seen. A merchant is suicidal if they are using Bitpay. They will get so many complaints from customers who don't know WTF happened.

Btw, clicking the bitcoin: link never works for me with localbitcoins. I have no idea if there needs to be a browser plugin. There are no instructions provided by Bitpay.

I've added bold to the pre-existing italicization to make my comment easier for you to not misinterpret.

You will also note in my other comments I did not say using a fragile gateway service was necessarily a bad idea (in fact I suggested you contact them to work out an interface), but merely pointed out you should consider how your business will cope with their (quite likely) failure to continue providing the service you need.


Lack of growth and limited repeat business due to dwinding interest and death due to fraud are mostly the same thing because the the fraud industry has a lot of interest in using BTC as a vehicle for getting it money out, thus it will drive up costs for these businesses, forcing them to increase their fees, further driving away what little "legitimate" interest there was to begin with.

I will agree with you on this though. Most of these businesses don't really know where their growth is going to come from; they are playing a lottery with startup capital to try to get big. If you can have a successful business that can drive legitimate traffic to them, you may help them succeed. There could be a synergy.

Finally, I'll point out one other contradiction in your reasoning. All of this extra "verification" you keep bringing up is anything but "seamless" (your word) for the customer. It is a very inefficient and expensive way to do e-commerce, which is why most normal sites don't do it (not because they, too, don't face some fraud risk). Every extra step in completing a purchase has an abandonment rate, which are cumulative and greatly increase cost of customer acquisition.

For something like a dating site, you are far better off just taking credit cards directly, not putting extra obstacles in the way of the customer. As you already pointed out, your risk from chargebacks is limited, since your cost to deliver the server is low to nonexistent. By introducing BTC into the middle of the process you are making it worse.

IMO a myopic and defeatist attitude. You ignore the possibility of paradigm shifts. For example, the paradigm shift that I elucidated upthread that with BTC as the output, it is impossible to prove who is receiving the funds and thus merchant agreements that exclude reselling are impotent. The traditional financial sector is paid to be dumb and slow to adapt. It could take them year or years to realize they've be outwitted by technological paradigm shifts. By that time, our ecosystem has maybe already gained critical mass.

These sites are experimenting with advanced verification methods that are not normally employed. They have the advantage that the BTC purchaser is extra motivated and willing to wait a little bit longer and jump through a few more KYC hoops than your typical credit card transaction. Dwolla is also approaching it from the same perspective.

They can do some instant verification and notify that transaction has cleared initial verification, thus allowing the parties to a transaction to decide if they want to deliver the goods. And then they can consume some hours or days to finalize the transaction and verification.

From the good customer's perspective, as long he or she can receive the goods quickly, he or she may not be affected by the delay (in contrast to Bitpay's normal transaction taking 10 - 30 minutes and being as obtuse and frustrating as hell to a novice!). The additional verification is a hassle and some customers may not follow through. So there needs to be a strong enough carrot to motivate them. In my business model, they won't be purchasing until they are already have a dire need to reply to some new contacts that they already invested effort into finding and contacting.

Also bitinsanity and dwolla appear to be able to avoid manual verification for many first time customers, when the amount involved is very small and their instant verification is able to verify with sufficient probability, i.e. a callback to the phone number that matches the address on the credit card or for example Verified By Visa. Or in dwolla's case, verifying login of the user's online banking account, because if a hacker has that, then they've likely already cleaned out the account in an easier way (such as issuing transfers from within that bank account site).

These companies depend on repeat business to lower the fraud rate and cost. Their fraud cost is built in to their fee model.

So you can't just assume that all this sites will fail due to fraud. Their entire business models are built around verification modeling. Are you sure you are omniscient?

Right now I think they are more likely to fail due to lack of customer base and dwindling interest in Bitcoin until the price finally bottoms under $150. So they need a boost to drive more customers. And to differentiate themself from the herd of companies offering this service.

I agree and disagree. Such services have been and will shut down due to fraud regardless of government abuse or spying, or the lack thereof. That's largely a free market outcome, in the present environment.

Why KYC and AML will collapse the global economy


For one of many reasons orthogonal to the degrees-of-freedom efficiency means more innovation (including the ability of people in the 3rd world to quickly set up an ecommerce site without jumping through hoops, and testing a site idea before committing a lot of time to set up a proper corporate entity, etc), if someone doesn't like you in government they make a phone call and you are shut off without due process. This is the new normal.

Or you are coerced to spy for the government (or even some fraudster within the government who has the power to prevent you from reporting him to the authorities because he is the authorities) in return for not being shut down.

And so being anonymous is extremely important.

Because for one reason I haven't been able to get in touch with anyone at these credit card -> BTC providers. Maybe some of you guys have some contacts and can get the ball rolling.

The point of autonomy is that the market will keep adapting and finding new avenues. The monetary system is going to die and they will end up shutting the entire global economy down.

But we plan on doing something about that.

Rome wasn't built in a day. Step-by-step. Carpe diem. Seize the opportunities that exist and build more in the meantime.

These providers could potentially maximize their growth near-term and use that to find new avenues (e.g. the Dwolla -> BTC option and others).

Happy that I finally got my point through. The important first step is getting influential people to understand what I was talking about. Thanks.

Did the epiphany hit you yet? Bitinsanity sends the BTC to any address the customer provides. They do that now. Thus a merchant can give the customer a BTC address. And the customer is then in effect buying for the merchant. Bitinsanity has nothing to do with that. All they need to do offer a slightly more programmable API on what THEY ALREADY DO.


Dwolla is in the business of verifying the user and following procedures for ACH such as obtaining a signed permission with a scan of id. The instant verification is only to get the 4 day transfer delay rolling asap. Then there is 4 days for Dwolla to follow up on verification.

This is night and day difference between accepting credit cards with only an AVS verification step.


What is remarkable is how obtuse you are. Are you a gatekeeper?


You don't understand the entire point of the autonomy of Bitcoin. You need to go back to Bitcoin 101 class.

I know damn well there is a 30 - 60 day window for extraordinary cases.  Please read what I wrote. I said in "most cases" they are final. Chargebacks on ACH are generally discouraged by the banks if the provider has done the necessary verification procedures and received permission from the owner of the bank account. Dwolla is in the business of working closely with banks on this process.


Bitinsanity has to verify the card holder in either case. There is no difference.

If I have a bunch of stolen credit cards, I don't need to set up a fake merchant, I can go directly to bitinsanity and try to get $25 in BTC from each card.

Where is your logic?


They don't need to do reselling. All they need to do provide an GET or POST HTTP API (i.e. a special URL) to populate the BTC address field automatically and provide a redirection after the transaction is complete.

They are already sending the BTC to any address specified.


They can't check who owns the BTC address. Impossible.

You are entirely missing the programming points here. And you are a programmer.

Did the epiphany hit you yet? Bitinsanity sends the BTC to any address the customer provides. They do that now. Thus a merchant can give the customer a BTC address. And the customer is then in effect buying for the merchant. Bitinsanity has nothing to do with that. All they need to do offer a slightly more programmable API on what THEY ALREADY DO.

The bad people can ATTEMPT to do that now (but they will fail bcz of verification) with the existing credit card -> BTC providers I linked to. No need to set up a merchant. Just go to the providers I linked to and use the credit card to buy BTC. That is why those providers have sophisticated verification procedures (e.g. an automated callback to the phone number that matches the card address or asking the customer capture a pic of their id and submit it), that can take up to hours. Also that is why bitinsanity only allows a maximum of $25 purchase per card (per window of time).

I am only talking about making the integration work seamlessly for the good customers.

Sounds to me like you don't have much experience with ecommerce. In 2000, I wrote an entire download site (downloadfast.com) that did payment processing for download software merchants.


They are in business now and accepting credit cards for bitcoins.

While it exists, it is a way to boostrap adoption. From the larger ecosystem, we can gain inertia to give the middle finger to credit cards.

Also these services could also accept Dwolla for purchasing BTC. Dwolla does an instant verification of the user's bank account by logging in with the user's provided credentials to the user's account at the bank's online website. The transfer takes 3 - 4 days, but it can't be charged back in most cases (ACH transfers are usually final). The same streamlining of integration that I proposed applies so the 4 day wait isn't a burden on the customer.

Also don't assume TPTB are against Bitcoin. I think they love it. The overriding globalists want to destroy the existing monetary system and replace it with a global control. A global non-anonymous ledger is a coup for them.

JUST DO IT!

Combine these two:

a) https://blockchain.info/api/api_receive
b) http://www.bitcoininsanity.com/   or   https://www.bitin.co/buy

Therefor I can issue the customer a bitcoin address, which they must MANUALLY copy+paste to purchase some BTC using their credit card (paypal, etc) which is then all automated from that point forward, except the customer must MANUALLY return to the ecommerce site and their payment will be typically be confirmed within Bitcoin's 10 minutes for 1 confirmation. (note they could also pay directly from any BTC they already have, for those rarer customers that do own BTC)

The downside is the user has to copy+paste a BTC address to another website, and then manually navigate back to the ecommerce site and wait 10 - 30 minutes for confirmation.

I did email the following companies to ask if they can setup more seamless integration and am waiting any response but appears they are not responsive:

http://www.bitcoininsanity.com/

https://www.bitin.co/buy

Does any one have a way to accomplish a more seamless integration so that naive customers don't get lost? Ideally what should happen is I use the blockchain.info API to generate a new BTC address and the customer should be automatically redirected to a page where they can pay with a credit card to buy BTC which is sent to that BTC address (the address automatically set for the customer), then after the credit card transaction is initiated (and without waiting for the block chain confirmation and without waiting for the credit card processing company to do all their manual verification, e.g. without waiting for them to complete a request for scan of id or phone callback), the customer should be immediately returned automatically to the ecommerce site, so the ecommerce site knows that customer has initiated the transaction and the ecommerce site will know it is waiting for the blockchain.info API callback after the BTC has been sent and the block chain makes one confirmation.

The point of returning the customer automatically and immediately to the ecommerce site is because many virtual goods are essentially cost-free, so the ecommerce site may choose to deliver the virtual goods immediately (e.g. a online dating site membership or download software subscription) and rescind the virtual good later if confirmation fails. In other words, chargebacks are an acceptable cost in return for the advantage of giving the good customers immediate seamless, automated access.

Without this, Bitcoin will never be widely used for ecommerce!!!

I am so surprised that no one has done this yet!!!

We've got to get millions of new merchants to accept BTC. And millions of new customers to learn that their merchant does. This is how you do it!!! The ecommerce site can also accept direct BTC transfers for those who already have BTC (which is the vast minority right now), so this will drive millions of people into the ecosystem.


What is the advantage over accepting credit cards directly via Paypal or Moneybookers (skrill)? Do you have to ask?! Don't you know about unexpected holdbacks, account freezes, and other bullshit when dealing with those. And also to get paid in BTC and hold balances in BTC. And also because the above method in theory doesn't require the small merchant provide any documentation and KYC/AML charades.


I have an immediate need for such a service. If anyone can provide the service, I will use it and pay you.