Bitcoin Forum

It hit me this weekend that there is a certain subset of things I can never use BTC for.

I've recently started using Uber quite a bit. For those who don't know, it's a car service. You hit a button in the app and a car is there to pick you up in just a few minutes. It takes you where you want to go, you hop out and walk away, that's it. You don't need to pay or tip, it's all handled for you. The service automatically charges you the appropriate amount based on the pickup and dropoff locations and you never worry about it.

But there's no way to have these charges automatically pulled from your account, and with the irreversibility of bitcoin, no one sane would entrust a service the right to send coin on their behalf.

Is this a limitation? Is there some answer I haven't thought of?

I think it's an interesting question, but I think it boils down to asking whether irreversable transactions are a problem.  I think the usual answer is that multisig transactions are the solution here.  Specifically for UBER, it might mean that the uber app simply sends you a request to 'ok' the amount after you get dropped off.  I don't really know because I haven't used UBER.  Obviously you're right that you wouldn't want to give a company blind access to your entire wallet so if UBER was taking bitcoin payments they'd obvs have to set it up a bit differently than they have with visa or whatever.

You could probably pre-deposit a certain amount of btc into an Uber account if they had that option. Then the needed amount would be withdrawn. Definitely not easier than the way they have it set up now though. bTC won't be a payment solution for everything though...

You could even use a trusted intermediary that releases funds with your approval.

I suppose services could hold a pre-deposited balance, and you just reload monthly or whatever...
Not as easy as allowing charges automatically...but without the protection you get from other payments systems it's probably the best way.

Simple. You use your tracking device (smartphone?) to cal for a car. A message pops up asking you to sign a tx to send BTC to the service. You send 1 BTC, which is more than enough to get you pretty much everywhere. The car comes around, you hop in and you get dropped off at your destination. You just walk away. One minute later, your tracking device does a little sound. Your remaining BTC has just been received. Pretty easy I'd say :D

This is exactly what I was going to suggest, but why would you be ok trusting a company with your credit or bank details but not Bitcoin?  There's nothing to stop them draining your account at the moment is there?

Umm, you can already pay for Lyft (similar to Uber) with bitcoins via Gyft.

I pay my monthly hosting service with bitcoins. I am charged monthly, sent an e-mail reminding me. I missed the payment once, they e-mailed me telling me they would stop my service if I did not pay. I paid. Simple.

I have one charge on my bank account that I have no idea how to get rid of. I've called and e-mailed the company and they put me through so much trouble.

well, uh, you could give them your private key, thats pretty much the same as giving them the credit card number, but i dont think anyone would do so unless they had to.

Search for "Bitcoin micropayment channels"

what if your bank balance was empty because your employer messed up with your salary payment. does the company chase after you later with invoices or do they do blance checks before car arrives.

the solution is that regular customers prepay an allotment of bitcoins into Uber's service and they deduct amounts as and when needed. to think of it logically, if you know you need $200 to pay for a weeks transport. right now you have you withdraw a third of a bitcoin to fill up your bank account. so thats 0.33btc not available for you to trade with elsewhere.. so the reality ends up as the same whether its sat in a bank account for use for transport. or sat in Uber's service

This is just like using credit cards filled with bitcoin, a centralised agency will have to take care of the payments, defeating the purpose of bitcoin in the first place lol.

no, bitcoin life savings should be self managed. in cold stores of the owner. but daily spend amounts wold be used in third party services for convenience, benefits and features that cold stores do not allow.

much like banks store life savings but crdit cards offer features for daily spends

much like share holders store large amounts of shares as certificates and only play with small amounts on trading platforms

much like many people store 90% of bitcoins cold store and only risk 10% (well they should do) on bitcoin exchanges.

people will learn putting all their wealth into a third party service is stupid. this is why rich people own gold, expensive real estate, antique art, etc. because they do not trust third party services to store all their wealth, but will happily use third party services for daily/weekly spend amounts.

I don't get why people can't wrap their head around the idea of having separate wallet for daily spending needs. It really isn't different than your physical wallet in your pocket. You would not carry your life savings around in your back pocket so why would you do it with bit coin?

I gotta say, I'm pretty pleased this started some decent conversation...

To go over responses:

Why would I trust a company with my credit card number and not my bitcoin wallet? Because my bank guarantees 100% protection against charges, and the government forces them to back that up. And yes, I've had fraud, and yes I've gotten it all reversed, that's not possible with bitcoins (there is no reversal of charges). And likewise (largely for franky): Credit cards offer a guaranteed payment to vendors up to a certain amount. If you're over-drawn or have insufficient funds, your credit card provider will chase you down for that money, not the vendor. Or in my case, Paypal will since I have it attached to my paypal account.

Regarding pre-depositing some large amount and spending it down...this is similar to what I do for Fastrak (pre-pay a small device that gets charged when driving over the bridges here in San Francisco). It's convenient enough and probably works. The downside is that at most that charge is < $10 (I forget how much the bridges are on weekends these days). I've had Uber drives (again, using that as an example) well over $100.

I'm in a place in life where it's all about convenience, and I happen be interested in bitcoins these days, and it seems like it can do quite a bit to make things more convenient (recently got a new Android device, the ability to send / receive bitcoins right on my phone is pretty sweet) and this just stuck out as something...missing if that makes sense.

It will continue to get easier. The infrastructure is being built as we type. There are a lot of exciting things on the horizon. 

This is true and I am excited for the future. As most of you probably read today the Apple App store legal language was rewritten to allow certain things like a Bitcoin wallet. As more infrastructure and services make themselves available issues like you mention will have multiple solutions.

I also think some kind of small pre-paid amount or a hot wallet with limited amounts could be used in this situation. It doesn't beat the convenience of credit cards yet, but without doubt this process will be streamlined in the future.

Hmmm... Maybe I should start a credit card service on Bitcoins. I think I'm at least as trustworthy as Visa anyways :D

All of these responses miss the most important response.

You can already do this with bitcoins.


http://www.gyft.com/buy-gift-card/lyft/

Kasimir Hill talked about using this car service when she was doing her "living a week on bitcoin" piece.

Well to solve this, people will have to stop thinking about how to replicate payment functions that were designed around the existing system. There are probably better ways to address this than a pull transaction.

Yes, like how it is already being done for Lyft.

I think replicating existing payment functions is more feasible than changing the way people do things. Especially on the short term. People resist change.

I think a form of escrowed transaction that has a delay would work in this system
A form of Ntimelock
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=131443.0

In the short term absolutely. Hopefully as people get used to it the system can be streamlined to operate more efficiently.

I pondered this in this thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=622253.msg6895575#msg6895575

The system i was thinking about was a simple pull with 2factor auth.

Take a festival or holiday resort for instance,

Client arrives and charges up a QR wristband with BTC, pays for food/goods by showing QR to the merchant. Confirms the price of the goods and enters password/pin into the merchants scanner. goods paid/done.

It alleviates the need to carry cash, cards or phone & with the 2factor auth its as safe as using a CC.

That could work very well for night clubs etc. as well. When you order drinks they simply scan your qr bracelet.

For these scenarios this system would be ideal, low value/high frequency transactions.