Bitcoin Forum

Just imagine if Uber, Lyft or Paypal would incorporate the acceptance of bitcoin onto their respective platforms?  This would be a great step in the right direction and it would definitely bring a whole new group (millions of people) into the crypto world.  Or am i completely off here?

There are so many companies can accept bitcoins as payment method. But btc payment option brings so many problems. First and biggest problem is volatility. Crypto world is not stable and less volatile no matter of which coin/token you are referring

You're right.  I only those three as big tech companies and the ease of use of their platforms. 

From the company side, it is not a big problem as it seems. There are solutions for merchants to have their payment in Bitcoin converted automatically in fiat this to avoid the volatility. Bitpay, Paymium and surely some others offer this solution. So as merchants you don't lose any money. The same could be implemented for the customers side.

Volatility can be fixed by automatic hedging bots designed for companies, so that they never get affected negatively. But the real problem is that, transaction confirmation speed here. It's too slow really.

I don't think it's a game changer at all. Back in 2014, everyone thought merchant acceptance was a big deal. I've learned over time that consumer payments aren't the key to adoption, particularly because merchants generally just use Bitpay or Coinbase to process their transactions into dollars. That's likely what Uber would do as well (although maybe they would keep a small amount in BTC, like Overstock did).

It can be done, but I don't think this is particularly useful to adoption, especially if it's done through payment processors that just dump directly to fiat. We saw a lot of merchants adding Bitcoin payment options throughout the 2014-2015 bear market, and I don't think it drove adoption.

Seeing it as a merchant payment option might help overall BTC recognition, but as a consumer, it wouldn't make me think, "I better go out and buy some BTC so I can spend it on Uber." Especially if I knew anything about it and took into account the costs of acquiring BTC. And the fees to spend it on low-cost consumer payments. It doesn't make much sense.

It would be interesting if these companies accepted BTC and then also began including it in their investment portfolios. That would definitely have an effect on supply. But I don't know how likely that is.

The problem is that to start accepting Bitcoin itself, and using it to pay other expenses, a company would need to start taking a loss as a way of spreading Bitcoin's adoption.

Imagine if a restaurant start accepting Bitcoin. The owner receives 0.05 of Bitcoin from a dinner and has to pay the ingredients he spent to make the food. How would he pay his bills if the company he owes doesn't accept Bitcoin? He will always have the need to sell Bitcoin for fiat, to then, pay the market that sold him his ingredients.

Bitcoin is still very dependent from the fiat. Maybe in the future we may start seeing some Bitcoin to Bitcoin ecosystem.

This would definitely change things and I am sure, a lot of BTC enthusiast will use this function. However, one issue for the majority is, that the BTC price is fluctuating quite a lot, which makes a everyday usage of the coin difficult.

I think we need to take a step beyond that and make a decentralized taxi platform, no middle man so the fees are less for the customer and the earnings are more for the driver. It would be a blockchain and drivers are customers are rated and fully secured behind a blockchain database. This platform would also accept all the major cryptocurrencies I think.

if they would accept bitcoin, i don't think it will be a game changer unless, there companies made  an innovation, that it is only meant for bitcoins. that course could be a game changer, however it will depend on the market where they are located, for example uber, uber here in my country has some problems with the current government, and thankfully it is already been settled, then next, is the patronage of people to bitcoins, there are only a handful of people who lives in the city, with knowledge of bitcoins, and has trust on uber, so their market  is too low for us. lyft however is not here in my country. as for paypal, i think people with bitcoins, would rather transfer their bitcoins via wallet, instead of giving their address to paypal, since paypal is a different platform. if they could only companies would think up of ways on how they can also serve, people with bitcoins and we can see that we can all benefit from it, it only means that they will gain customers, and probably it will be a game changer, in which others will follow.

If this happens it is definitely a big contribution to bitcoins. And many people will be drawn here to invest. And there's going to be the introduction of bitcoins as money.

A big thing I have been thinking about recently is that businesses accepting Bitcoin is less about getting companies to accept Bitcoin so as to grow the community and more to cater to existing Bitcoin users. Even if they start to accept Bitcoin, it maybe increases the speculation value but people will just keep using the same old systems they used to be using. There may be "new" users using the new payment methods, but the real size of the community likely doesn't grow significantly.

PayPal itself is a mode of payment and they view Bitcoin as their competitor. So there is hardly any chance of Bitcoins getting accepted in PayPal. Also, there are are technical issues as well. PayPal transactions can be reversed, but Bitcoin transactions are irreversible.

Lets just assume what you are saying is true. If these companies start accepting bitcoin then the price of bitcoin will increase by atleast 4 to 5 times. These companies have millions of customers from around the world. As they introduce a new mode of payment the customers attraction will go towards bitcoin. As bitcoin is already famous people would want to buy bitcoins and hence there will be huge crowd on the buy list of bitcoin.
This will increase the price of bitcoin to its peak and then God knows what will happen.

i don't know what Lyft is but if Uber does it then it would be a nice little step towards more adoption.
but i don't think PayPal is going to be that helpful. their rules and how they centralize things and take ridiculous fees and generally how it works is never helpful in adoption of bitcoin. of course it will be good because it can help many convert between PayPal and bitcoin, back and forth, but the disadvantages seems more to me.

Maybe, but they won't any time soon, so better waste your brain with something more useful.

Even if they are denying to look at it at this stage, I am sure that in the coming years they have to accept Bitcoin as a payment method due to increase in demand from their customers. I see the valuable efforts of companies like Bitpay to allow merchants (online/offline) to accept Bitcoin with the proper invoicing system. Yes, considering the large user base of these companies I believe it would help Bitcoin user base to grow but it's going to grow in any way. If they are accepting Bitcoin then that would boost the speed of growth.

Uber may accept BTC in the near future but Paypal?? I dont think they will ever accept BTC, they think BTC is a competitor for their shitty services. But they dont know that BTC is much more than that. I feel Amazon or eBay will become a bigger impact than Paypal's acceptance.

I don't think that. Firstly, more people should start adopting the bitcoins; so if any service providers offers to accept bitcoins then there should be more users who can make the transactions by bitcoins, otherwise the idea will be failed.

Paypal accepting bitcoin what sense does it even make paypal has a currency and them accepting bitcoin sounds impossible normally trading bitcoin for paypal is also not allowed according to paypal terms i don't see implementation anytime soon
Uber is already on the brick of collapsing maybe bitcoin can save them I'm not sure

I do not think you can put Uber and Paypal in one box.
Uber helps you come from place A to place B, Paypal is a worldwide online payment system.
Uber already accepts bitcoin, but I don't think this was a game changer.
But Payal, that could give bitcoin a boost. If paypal would accept bitcoin, you could suddenly pay everywhere where paypal is accepted with bitcoin.
That would mean hundreds of thousands of shops.
But will paypal make such a move? I guess not. The volatility of bitcoin is just too high for that.

Huh? Why? When Amazon adds new methods for payment, I don't take any notice. I just pay the way I've always paid (gift card or store card w/ 5% off). Same with any other merchant. When I see ApplePay or Paypal advertised at a cashier, I don't give a shit. I have cash back credit cards and crypto.

There is something to be said for seeing "Bitcoin accepted here" in more and more places. But that's mostly what merchant acceptance is good for, at least for 99% of merchants because they use Bitpay, etc. It doesn't make sense to buy BTC just to spend on commerce. So I think it's more about the indirect effect of repeatedly seeing references to Bitcoin and hearing about it, causing people to learn more about it and eventually invest.

My guess is that Uber will start accepting bitcoin SOON!However I'm still skeptical about Paypal and other big companies,It's more likely they are doign their best to keep away bitcoin as it could really affect their monetary system.Let's see where bitcoin is going anyway.Exciting!

What if it takes a shit long time for the transaction to confirm? Like what is the policy if the transaction does not go through? Should the driver wait for the confirmation before they start driving? What if the passenger sent it with super low fees or no fees at all?

Another thing is, will the rider and driver be anonymous? Too much things to consider there.

I think that it would be great that this marketing giant will design a system that will avoid that transaction delay if they adopt bitcoin on their system. This system will be a great help to us also bitcoin earners.

Bitcoin transaction cost is too high to make it feasable for Uber/Lyft and other such services. But they could definately start using other coins, like dash at some point in the future to accept payment, or even create their own inner economy based on a crypto coin. I think the later is more likely as it'll be a lot more profitable for the company. But that's not likely to happen in the next few years, until the crypto currencies gain a much larger share of the financial markets

I think services such as Amazon and eBay will be a lot more effective any all these other ones. because Uber and things like that are very limited to one country but Amazon is more global that anything else and also it has a lot more usages. it almost has everything you can buy online and easy. and adding bitcoin would change a lot of things and helps it forward 100 times than anything else can.

If they will accept bitcoin then it is a real game changer because bitcoin will become more convenient for an average kind of person and those companies that can accept bitcoin will get a bigger growth in users because the bitcoin users will expand their usability and they will also use the applications and services that accept bitcoin as a payment.

Supermarkets is the main sphere. While I cant buy everyday products using BTC, it's not my preferred currency.

Maybe you weren't around in September 2014 (yup, three years ago) when Paypal did in fact accept Bitcoin, along with Litecoin and Dogecoin (that's no longer the case today). Yes, all ye Doge lovers, you can always take pride in the fact that you were once accepted currency by a mainstream payment processor, where so many alts have failed.

Did it help change the game? Not really. Yes, the wave of merchant adoption in 2014/15 helped Bitcoin lose some of its unwarranted dark market association. Yes, the merchants looked cool for having a Bitcoin logo on their site. But it didn't really help sales. People weren't really buying their stuff with Bitcoin.

There's still a lot of value. Any alt would kill to have people accept them. But it won't change the game.

One point to note: they accepted it via Coinbase, GoCoin and BitPay... as do a lot of other merchants. In fact, a lot of so-called Bitcoin casinos also accept Bitcoin through a third-party wallet. Because in the end, these merchants, like Paypal, actually convert the Bitcoin you send through Coinbase/GoCoin etc. to fiat, I don't really consider this as adoption. But for technical purposes, let's say yes, it still qualifies.
 

This.

Companies like Uber and Lyft won't adopt cryptocurrencies while this is a problem. But they may go with a more reliable alt that is easy to use and quick to confirm.

For these type of services it is cheaper to cooperate it with alt coins due to the transaction fees. Also most of the trading companies would like to cooperate with exchange trading sites like coinbase etc. but currently it seems fancy to have the logo of one of them on your website.

this will be a true future.... everything will be in crypto payment method. i believe uber will create their own platform and coins as a method of payment by uber passenger. Im hoping that they will take to considered the transaction fees and the transaction speed. as far as i know paypal are accepting altcoin before and convert it thru fiat money i dont really remember the year [well correct me if im wrong]. It is easy if Uber will make altcoin as a payment as it is fast in terms of transaction unlike bitcoin.

bitcoin is now available everywhere either its PayPal or it is UBR and it will change a lot of things investors and the bitcoin team will use this function for the more creativity and bitcoin development as everything is possible in love, war and bitcoin so the price can get change any time and it is the issue for the function because the price is fluctuating a bit fast which brings changes every day but I think it is good for the future of the bitcoin.

It's just a matter of time..recently in the news it was reported that some university and housing departments have started accepting bitcoin. So one is excited that many new service providers will join the train

There has been a lot of talk about volatility in regards to why many companies wouldn't accept BTC.  However, consider the fact that in most cases, these companies could liquidate it all to USD, EUR, etc. very quickly.

From my knowledge, government regulation (specifically in the US) could change the landscape, and since many of these companies already have people paying in local currency, it's probably not priority 1 to these large companies.  They're for sure investigating how to utilize BTC, and could be quite profitable if done at the right time.

True! If these big names start accepting bitcoin in their platform a whole new set of public will be interested in crypto currency and the investment inflow will increase considerably. However, it will increase the profitability of these companies and those who will be paying through bitcoin for their services, will be loosing a fortune.

We all know that bitcoin has a lot of potential left and the price is not yet reached the peak. It is still low and many people are buying bitcoins with the hope of future returns. A set of people like me, will nto be using bitcoins for these kind of real life transactions for sure. But yes, overall it will be a good news for the entire crypto community. If investment increase, it will increase the price of bitcoin for sure. 

Yea once world renowned apps start accepting cryptocurrencies adoption is surely going to rise through the roof. We need a way to simplify the whole 'wallet' technology to the average user though (an app like OMG or something?), because right now most people cant even begin to understand whats happening.