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Title: BTC front-end for amazon.com? Post by: mrabby on April 10, 2011, 08:40:02 PM Amazon.com has an API that lets you make purchases and things. How difficult would it be to basically glue one of the bitcoin exchanges to amazon's API so that you could automate the currency exchange? Assuming someone had an account with a currency exchange place, it would go something like this:
1. A firefox plugin or similar adds a "Buy with BTC" button to every amazon page 2. User clicks 'buy with btc' button for an item, and is taken to the btc2amazon.com site. 3. User sends btc2amazon the appropriate amount, as well as providing shipping details 4. btc2amazon waits for transaction to clear, then makes purchase via amazon with provided shipping details. Basically what coincard does, but just make a plugin (like a greasemonkey script) that integrates it with all of Amazon.com . . . thoughts? Title: Re: BTC front-end for amazon.com? Post by: Jered Kenna (TradeHill) on April 11, 2011, 02:33:00 PM Amazon.com has an API that lets you make purchases and things. How difficult would it be to basically glue one of the bitcoin exchanges to amazon's API so that you could automate the currency exchange? Assuming someone had an account with a currency exchange place, it would go something like this: 1. A firefox plugin or similar adds a "Buy with BTC" button to every amazon page 2. User clicks 'buy with btc' button for an item, and is taken to the btc2amazon.com site. 3. User sends btc2amazon the appropriate amount, as well as providing shipping details 4. btc2amazon waits for transaction to clear, then makes purchase via amazon with provided shipping details. Basically what coincard does, but just make a plugin (like a greasemonkey script) that integrates it with all of Amazon.com . . . thoughts? Seems doable and would be great if you could pull it off. Obviously the buyer will lose a couple percent in the transaction but it shouldn't be that bad. I like the idea. Title: Re: BTC front-end for amazon.com? Post by: mndrix on April 11, 2011, 04:01:06 PM Amazon.com has an API that lets you make purchases and things. Do you have a link to the API documentation? I can't find the API. Title: Re: BTC front-end for amazon.com? Post by: mrabby on April 11, 2011, 10:46:01 PM It turns out I was mistaken (i'm really surprised they don't offer that). You might be able to do it by basically scraping their website, but certainly not terribly conveniently.
It looks like bestbuy lets some people do it: http://bbyopen.com/documentation/commerce-api (although you need to contact them to set it up). I might take a look for sites that do offer an API for automating purchasing. Title: Re: BTC front-end for amazon.com? Post by: Anonymous on April 12, 2011, 05:15:21 AM Buy lots of gift vouchers from amazon then sell them for bitcoins automagically.
Other than that people could submit something they want to buy from amazon to a site and someone else could buy it for them. An amazon exchange if you will... Title: Re: BTC front-end for amazon.com? Post by: Jered Kenna (TradeHill) on April 12, 2011, 02:25:50 PM If it worked for best buy and turned out to generate a lot of business Amazon and everyone else would follow it.
Getting it to work for one major online retailer would be a victory and more than a good start the way I see it. I imagine when the first people accepted Paypal the others said "wtf no one is going to use that" then overnight they started accepting it too. |