Bitcoin Forum

Walmart Inc. customers will soon have the option to pay directly from their bank accounts with instant transfers for online purchases. The enhanced feature is a flash point in the escalating tensions between merchants and the card networks setting the fees for payment processing.


https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-09-19/walmart-plans-instant-bank-payments-cutting-out-card-networks/

The death of bitcoin. No real world use case to buy things from a major retailer. Walmart knows that taking payments in BTC would be even WORSE than paying merchant processing fees...

I don't see anything particularly noteworthy about that. Walmart customers will soon have the option, just as Revolut clients already have the option to transfer money to other Revolut accounts with no transaction fee.

Still nothing beats transaction settlement within 10 minutes, peer-to-peer, privately, permissionessly and cheaply.

A lot of merchants have had the ability to let people pay for purchases using ACH payments. This makes it a bit more 'instant' but I am going to make the assumption that higher priced items will still have a delay between the order and the ship to make certain that the funds are there.

Lets see if actually works out for them or it's another Walmart start something and then never really follow through thing.


https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/16/walmart-is-quietly-preparing-to-enter-the-metaverse.html


-Dave

that's what you get for not reading the story.


it seems like you are just making assumptions.


The world’s largest retailer has offered pay-by-bank through Walmart Pay since earlier this year. Until now, the transactions were akin to digital checks and took roughly three days to finalize when being processed through The Automated Clearing House, the same network often used for bill payments or paycheck deposits. Soon, customers opting for pay-by-bank transactions will see the purchase reflected in their bank account balance instantly – and Walmart will receive the funds immediately.


nothing beats instant not even bitcoin...and not only instant but instantly in your bank account so you can actually use the money. unlike bitcoin where you have to sell it to usd paying a fee then put in a withdrawal with some 3rd party and wait days to see if they send it to you or not.


what are you even talking about?  ???


enjoy HODLING then. that's about all you can do with it.

"...nothing beats instant not even bitcoin..."

Walmart avoiding card fees is great since they will be able to post lower prices on many items and/or pay their employees more and/or increase profits which is good for their stockholders. The only loser there is banks, sounds great to me. Now, saying "nothing beats instant not even bitcoin" is way off the mark of reality. Bitcoin is a safety net against inflation, so people who own BTC will be in better financial shape. (For example) If they slowly spend a small % of their BTC - along with buying more on dips - then they will have much more cash available to spend. That does beat other types of money.

i doubt they are going to lower any prices. i heard a while back that they were supposed to be lowering prices on "thousands" of items but nothing i saw went down in price at all. but here's an idea, maybe they could staff their cash registers with humans and let them check people out. instead of monitoring them like a criminal at the self checkout...


not if bitcoin doesn't acheive some type of traction in the real world like being able to use it at major retailers in lieu of fiat. but for the most part, i appreciate your input.

I sure hope they bolster up their security for this one when they will literally have everything they need you might as well land them a copy of your social security number while you’re at it haha jk

ssn is not required when making purchases at walmart although you might have to show an ID if you're trying to buy alcohol or something like that. you would have to do that even if you were using bitcoin, which you can't of course since bitcoin is only for hodling.   ;D

The news sounds a bit more about Walmart cutting out credit-card middlemen, rather than rejecting Bitcoin as payments, and maybe other new kinds of payments altogether. Instead, the new system allows customers to pay directly from their bank accounts, reducing the processing fees that Walmart faces and bypassing some of the delays associated with older systems like ACH. That, though, does not make Bitcoin irrelevant at all. Bitcoin is much more relevant in cases where current systems are slow and expensive, such as global transactions and remittances.

Interesting how Walmart's focus is on bank transfers in almost real-time, reflecting Walmart's goal of smoothing the online payment process. Meanwhile, Bitcoin still serves a role in less-serviced or slower markets than those in the US. While that is quite true, Bitcoin does have proven utility in sectors outside major retail, particularly in cross-border payments. So it's not "dead," just playing another game.

Did Bitcoin flourish because some big retailers in US started accepting them? What a stupid statement!

Bitcoin is not a great option for merchant payments. It takes time but it also protects your privacy. Bitcoin didn't grow just because it is accepted by the big retailers. It grew because of the community backing it and its privacy.

I am sure Walmart has its own reason for ditching the payment processing aggregators who charges around 2% on every card payment. Probably their cost model cannot accommodate that additional 2% of outgoing fees. But what to do with Bitcoin here?

Bitcoin is a very different ball game! 

At least in the USA privacy with bitcoin is just an ILLUSION. Unless you plan to break the law. You have to come up with a more compelling reason than "privacy" there is no privacy from the IRS.

It's a failed ballgame as far as performing some sort of fiat replacement that I could use in my daily life. Every single cryptocurrency is the same in that regard: failure!

Enjoy hodling/investing that's what I think 99.99% of you guys use it for. Not much of a use case. :-X

I think there's probably plenty of remittance services that fulfill a role to solve that problem! That's what business do they step in and fill a need. That's how the world works

Just to add I CANT IMAGINE a money transfer svc being slower than bitcoin. Sender had to send usd to an exchange could take several business days then the receiver has to cash out from some CEX could take several business days. In between everyone is paying fees to do every single thing.

Or rather, can't read the story due to paywall. I just accessed link you shared, but the website force me to choose either register an account or pay subscription.


I can't read the story. But have you tried searching list of company which accept Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency? If you did that, you can find such list such as https://bitpay.com/directory/ (https://bitpay.com/directory/).

I don't remember Bitcoin being established as a popular retail payment method. ;D There's no reason for us to declare "the death of Bitcoin".
BTC will always be "digital gold" and no big merchant is going to accept it as a payment method. This is the sad truth.
This news actually are good for crypto. The card networks are becoming more expensive and the merchants are trying to get rid of them.
Maybe soon crypto(not necessarily Bitcoin) will become competitive to the fiat payment systems and some merchants might accept altcoins as a payment method.

And we are here to discuss a death of Bitcoin, really?

Bitcoin is not a replacement of fiat currency for daily payment. It can be used like it when transaction fee is cheap or with Lightning Network or Layer 2 solutions but it is not the only use case of Bitcoin.

It can be used for payment, investment, store of asset and more. You're free to see what use case is interested and helpful with you from Bitcoin and start, or if you don't see anything helpful but only see a coming death for Bitcoin, now it's time to ignore Bitcoin.

The bullish case for Bitcoin (https://www.amazon.com/Bullish-Case-Bitcoin-Vijay-Boyapati/dp/1737204118)

"Bitcoin is dead" dots (https://www.bitcoindeaths.com/) become more sparsely with time.

that's strange i was able to see it for free unregistered but now i see the paywall too. normally i dont like to link to paywall stories i don't support sites like that. sorry about that issue.


https://bitpay.com/directory/autozone/

BitPay makes it easy to buy gift cards for AutoZone with cryptocurrency.

i wouldn't necessarily call that being a company that accepts bitcoin lol. if they're all like that then that directory is a waste of effort. who wants to buy gift cards that locks your money into one single vendor. and then if you happen to change your mind and rather use your money somewhere else you probably can't or it's a major hassle to cash out that gift card somehow. gift cards? seriously? that's the best bitcoin can let me do?  :-[

Did you miss the filter section where you can find merchant which accept Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency directly?

https://i.ibb.co/zVgk2Jw/a.png (https://ibb.co/RTK56yW)

And while buying gift card is less than ideal, i expect wise Bitcoiner would buy the gift card after they decide to buy something and just before they perform checkout.

Trading with gift cards on P2P platforms is risky with many risks like used gift cards, rip-off and more, but if it is buying from official stores, these risks don't exist.

Would you mind explaining more about "Buying gift card is less than ideal", please.

Trading gift cards: Pros and Cons (https://prestmit.io/blog/trading-gift-cards-reddit-here-pros-cons). This has pros and cons of trading gift cards with Bitcoin and cryptocurreny but I'm unsure what you implied with "less than ideal".

I agree with your statement, but i never say anything about trading/buying gift card on P2P or other risky platform.


Aside from what stated on website you mentioned, you also spend more time (to buy and redeem the gift card) and could end spend more money (for example, spending $103 to buy $100 gift card).

I totally agree.
BTC is not your typical money per se, but it has even more use cases than it and one should only dig a bit deeper to see how it can applied and used.
The "Death" of Bitcoin would be the death of ideals of the crypto.

Why do you think that it's the death of Bitcoin? Have you seen how really possibly it is to have a Bitcoin card and pay with it on POS terminal? With Bitcoin lighting, that's very much possible and I think that will be the future of Bitcoin.
Have you seen this video before? Look at this: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/d3wMjJogJFU

By the way, Bitcoin is not an alternative of such payment methods and was never created with that purpose. It's purpose is clearly written in it's whitepaper and Bitcoin does job very well. You can make a transaction without the help of 3rd party, it's still P2P.
Yes, time has passed and modern problems need modern solutions but Bitcoin sticks with its original plan and purpose, that's all but it doesn't mean that this coin is about to die. If you see, it recently got ETF approval and it's market cap is 1.26 Trillion American dollar.

I’m confused because in my country this has been normalized already. We have instant online payments already. Just scan the qr code from wherever you are paying and the money will be sent immediately to their account. This is a different platform from a bank tho. It doesn’t have any physical branch but you can store your fiat in. Kind of like a wallet except not for crypto. From what I know, we can do this with banks as well. Sending from bank to bank. We are not a first world country but it is surprising that we are ahead when it comes to things like this.
Well. If you are going to be transacting with a retailer, you would not want your information to be leaked. This is one purpose of bitcoin. No need to share unnecessary information to strangers that could later on use this against you in some way.

if you buy things at any retailer in person they have video cameras all over the place. no matter how you pay you're on video and they know exactly who you are. so the payment method is pretty much irrelevant you're not anonymous. plus the video could show you actually using bitcoin as payment. now the whole world knows or potentially could know that you use bitcoin. the people that run the cash registers will know. the security who watch the video cameras might know. you're not as anonymous as you think.

These video cameras are a possibly Privacy breaking deal but it does not mean the end of the world.  While I hate them, I have to accustom myself to their existence and find other ways out.  Even wearing a mask and a hat is still better than nothing at all.  There are ways to improvize things on the moment.

How would the 'whole world' know that I used Bitcoin?  How would they know me in the first place?  Why would that video become known all over the World, does Walmart post their security camera videos all over the Internet constantly?  Most of that footage likely ends up simply overwritten.  I am paranoid and all but realistically speaking, unless somebody is looking to monitor you and investigate you or unless the surveillance camera owners are using software that processes feed information, faces et cetera, the chances of being recognized are very slim.  And as far as I know, most big stores do not use cloud storage.  That is comfortable for a home owner who wants to purchase a camera that works wirelessly almost immediately upon setup and placement.  If you run these cameras storing the footage on HDDs like the old way, your face will probably be overwritten in a matter of weeks.

It's too paranoid. Most of people don't care about privacy and if they care about it, they are mostly not too paranoid like this.

If anyone is paranoid about this risk, they have other choices, other merchants to buy things with other payment methods too. Walmart is not the only place where people can visit for shopping.

Modest privacy protection proposal (https://blog.lopp.net/modest-privacy-protection-proposal/)

Bitcoin Privacy Guide (https://bitcoiner.guide/privacy/)

• Sourcing your bitcoin (https://bitcoiner.guide/privacy/get)
• Securing your bitcoin (https://bitcoiner.guide/privacy/secure)
• Segregating your bitcoin (https://bitcoiner.guide/privacy/segregate)
• Scrutinising your Bitcoin transactions (https://bitcoiner.guide/privacy/scrutinise)
• Separating your bitcoin from its past (https://bitcoiner.guide/privacy/separate)
• Safeguarding your bitcoin (https://bitcoiner.guide/privacy/safeguard)
• Spending your bitcoin (https://bitcoiner.guide/privacy/spend)
• Supplementary tools (https://bitcoiner.guide/privacy/supplementary)

That doesn't mean it's the death of bitcoin. Bitcoin was never intended as a replacement for instant payment services, that's was additional layers like lightning are for. Bitcoin is meant as a replacement for centralized banks and other ways of storing value, which it is still best at.