Bitcoin Forum

As presented at the Miami conference Zipzap seems to be rapidly approaching its rollout in the UK. In fact it's next week according to their Q & A.

I assume it'll be the same for other countries soon as they have offices in Buenos Aires, Delhi, London and SF and they're claiming hundreds of thousands of eventual locations worldwide.

http://cashcoin.zipzapinc.com/

https://twitter.com/ZipZapInc

In the UK purchasing Bitcoin will have a flat £3.95 fee at 28,000 locations. There's one location within 100 metres of me and I live pretty much in the middle of nowhere. That's kinda surreal.

I wonder what effect this'll have on things.

Find your nearest location here - http://www.zipzapinc.com/

I was wondering what their markup will be. So it's £3.95 whether you buy 0.01BTC or 1BTC? Is there any more details on this?

I'm wondering too. No mention of extra details so far. Their markup may be brutal. We'll have to see.

Hopefully someone with access to this forum was at Miami and can report back or the presentation'll go online.

You just said £3.95 flat fee? That's pretty good if you're buying 1BTC but not so much if you just want to buy £10's worth.

Yup. That's what they're claiming. It's a flat fee.

There's one at the top of my street. Cool. You can search for one near you https://www.zipzapinc.com/

At that fee, you will just have to make sure you are buying a decent amount of BTC to make it worth your money.

It will probably be a flat fee AND a healthy percent commission. But just guessing.

Depends on whether you get the market rate. Dunno what market they'll be using.

£10 worth is gonna sting. 30-50 and above and it's probably less than the average localbitcoin premium for cash and a whole lot less sketchy.

Maybe, although you would've thought they'd have said if this was the case.

I wonder if they'll be advertising this any where? I can't imagine it being popular or getting much publicity if they dont.

It's certainly going to cause some head scratching for the average person buying some fags and booze if there are Bitcoin leaflets everywhere.

I wonder how they plan to educate people, or maybe they'll let folks discover it for themselves. It'll be very intriguing to see the figures for the first few months.

Maybe this will boost the price even more?  People will be investing more than they would otherwise because it is a "deal" to buy more at once?

This is great news though.  This just open more doors to adoption for sure.

I doubt no one will notice. I've never heard or seen any signs for these zip-zap places anywhere and apparently they're all over.

This is potentially really big news. I imagine it will be places like Beareu De Changes that will have the ZipZap sticker on the window. Just probably never noticed. There'll be one nearby either way I'm sure. Easy for ordinary people to go buy Bitcoin. Demand might go up a lot from this.

You could well be right for now. I didn't know my local shop was a Zipzap location until I looked on that map.

It does remove an enormous barrier though. Most people getting interested in the idea in the UK at the moment are going to be instantly turned off when it comes to actually trying to obtain any. With this it just requires a trip down the shop.

The next barrier will be wallets. Their site directs you to blockchain.info but there needs to be a clear explanation on their own page. The blockchain.info wallet page isn't exactly welcoming to a total newbie.

Still, pretty groundbreaking stuff.

There are 7 outlets in walking distance to me.  Seems expensive, although they dont have any competition.

I wonder what sort of marketing they are going to do.

This is great news.
How many people have asked you Bitcoin? What's Bitcoin? Where do you buy it? How do you buy it?

Now you just say 'yeah just pop up to that shop at the top of the street and they'll sort you out'

This is also great news if there's any banking problems,

A) people will learn real quick what bitcoin is and be able to easily purchase it
B) these 28000 merchants will be more familiar with & be able to switch to accepting Bitcoin too

great, finally its coming!

The biggest thing for me, is it gives Bitcoins legitimacy in the UK.  If my bank manager questions why I am selling bitcoin miners, I can point to the fact I can walk into my local corner shop, and buy bitcoins.

What about selling Bitcoins? This seems to be a major barrier.

Aye. I think buyers will be on their own there. I should think that's going to be far too much hassle for them to deal with. One fine day we'll have a real exchange in the UK.

they will also be selling Litecoin.

Does anybody know if the store clerk has to interact with Bitcoin in any way or understand what is happening, because it seems like you just give them a slip and they stick it in a machine and it's "thankyou please come again" ?

I'm sure 99.9% of folks behind the counter won't have a clue what they're transacting. It'll have to be exactly as you said it'll operate.

Great news, but I am very dubious about what exchange rate they will base it on - probably Gox - that would give them a 15% commission right there ;)

Cashtabs fee are generally £3.95 + 3.95%

But it still depends on what the exchange rate they choose for bitcoins to UKP. Currency convertors screw people all the time with large spreads. Its even easier with bitcoin because there is no centralised exchange rate.

wasnt zipzap what bitinstant used to use?  I wonder how long till something like this comes back to the U.S.

Right. I think if they price @ localbitcoins then they will get the people that might have used localbitcoins (the kind people that would rather not wire transfer to a foreign bank or submit identification documents) and make a nice profit from them, but if they price @ bitstamp they will get those people AND a lot more but not necessarily make a great profit from them. The only thing that will change this is competition, but they will probably have that side of the market cornered for a good while in the UK yet. Not bothered, it's all good for Bitcoin, it is a very welcome service.

And why on earth your banking manager should ask you this? he should mind to his own business ;)

Why can't they divulge their pricing formula? What is this, the KGB?

You just can't be happy can you? Now you're complaining about the fee..

Every bitcoin company I know discloses their "fee structure" - seems entirely reasonable thing to expect.

Seems they don't do any since nobody seems to have heard of it nor even know their local store provides the service.

it's a good rate I guess for large amounts. it might be high for small ones but if it was made into a percentage then all medium and big buyers won't be satisfied.
Great news generally for bitcoins.

of course. if you sell gold, you must sell silver  ;)

Nah, people don't care for silver because it's second-best shit... like Litecoin  ;D.

This is awesome news. Would be great to be able to give people less than a 5-step solution involving finding documents etc when they ask about how to get bitcoin

There will be 4 within a 5 mile radius of where i live. Awesome!!

Likewise, impressive.

lol indeed. This plus bitcoin ATM / vending machines will really drive adoption. Heck, might even get some women using bitcoin soon ;)

So is there a date for when this actually goes live? I might test it out just for the sake, providing the fees/commission aren't ridiculous.

Yeah I was thinking that. My local NISA accepts all sorts of delivery.courier services. Surely they'll take this on given the chance.

You can search here: https://www.zipzapinc.com/

Don't think you can search UK yet, tried the other day. Just says that it's coming soon and shows a pic of London.

Worked for me. Just go down to the bottom to the map and enter your postcode.

Ah yeah, sweet. As suspected, my local Nisa is in!

I'd still put money that if you go into most of these shops and ask for £10's worth of Bitcoin they'll be all bitwhat?  ;D

I hope they actually do some advertising for this, because otherwise I can't see it being very successful, but I'm glad it's there. Hope I'm proved wrong.

Yeah I thought that. The same Nisa I speak of has a sticker on the door and are on an online map to say they participate in collect +, am delivery mechanism used now by eBay. I went in to do it and they had no idea what to do with my parcel. lol.

These thing don't seem to be well advertised, not like Paypoint or the e-top ups that have signs or stickers everywhere and obviously this zip-zap has nothing. You can only really find out about it from their website. I'd never even heard of zipzap until this involvement with Bitcoin came about.

I assume if this uses PayPoint then all you'll do is go in, wave the piece of paper at them and say "I'd like to make a payment" or something similar, they scan it, etc.. Without Bitcoin even having to be mentioned at all.

And you'll probably end up with them trying to send you a £10 O2 top-up voucher to your wallet address haha.

 ;D

But, I would assume it is automated. There is after all a huge amount of things that can be paid for via PayPoint:
http://www.paypoint.co.uk/customers/organisation-list

I guess we just wait and see.

This will be really cool though, if it works.

Wow, that is a lot. So is zipzap run through the Paypoint network or is it something else?