Bitcoin Forum

http://cointelegraph.com/news/111768/bitpay_heralds_emerging_bitcoin_payment_protocol

Bitpay outlined on Monday what is likely to become a revolutionary boost to Bitcoin’s mainstream appeal – and its merchants are already using it.

Originally outlined by Bitcoin Foundation’s Gavin Andreesen last year, the Bitcoin Payment Protocol (BPP), also known as BIP 0070, is an interface for Bitcoin transactions designed to make transactions between customers and merchants simpler to understand.

While the technology involved would hardly send shockwaves through the technical community, its improvements for the transaction experience cannot be underestimated.

“To the end user, Payment Protocol abstracts away some of the more complicated aspects of Bitcoin,” Bitpay explains in a blog post. It is these ‘complicated’ aspects which stand the greatest chance of putting off already wary end consumers, and BPP successfully eradicates the need to deal with components such as Bitcoin addresses, “while providing a number of additional benefits such as proof-of-payment and refund addresses.”

The end effect for the consumer is thus a payment experience broadly similar to existing online transactions, which by and large also operate under a simplified user interface.

There are also improvements brought to merchants, however. Bitpay explains:
“The main advantage is that the Payment Protocol makes the payment process much faster: instead of having to monitor the blockchain for new transactions, the transaction is sent directly to the merchant’s server.”
Bitpay also says that this will also benefit customers who will not need to wait as long to have payments confirmed.
Bridging the gap

The most striking differences when it comes to using BPP-enabled infrastructure, however, are visual ones. The merchant’s public key is replaced simply by its name; secure payments are highlighted green which mirrors secure Internet transactions.

The system also caters for personalization of various fields, allowing merchants to design bespoke confirmation messages to mimic their style or provide customers with additional information. For customers, this can take the form of a summary of items ordered, which produces an effect of Bitcoin being simply integrated into a ‘regular’ payment setup.

Personalization is only the first step in a greater plan of expandability, however, and Bitpay is keen to point out the protocol’s potential. BItpay says:
“The Payment Protocol is designed to be extensible, and there are already a lot of ideas for cool features that can be added on top of it.”
Bipay cites such examples as Bluetooth mobile payments which do not require an Internet connection, as well as subscriptions, tipping and “automatic payments for authorized merchants up to a defined limit.”

This latter concept would allow customers to go beyond contactless payment and pay “without even pulling the phone from your pocket,” according to Bitpay.

In BPP, the Bitcoin community has at its disposal not only a powerful outreach tool, but one which allows users to experience increased convenience without the proviso of learning about new concepts of money. And since the tool is standard for all merchants who use Bitpay to process transactions, its benefits cannot remain out of the mainstream for long.

Customers will require a wallet which supports BPP for the meantime, which is currently available with the offerings from Hive among others.

Nice read. Question: is this the sort of framework that could launch more big ticket purchases e.g. one country buying a million $ worth of oil from another country? At the moment most btc purchases are retail customers buying a laptop or a cup of coffee, which is great -- but could this facilitate the next tier purchases? Proof of purchase would be one big factor.

And this is why I don't code the protocol... you lost me at heralds...

I'm glad someone understands this and I hope Bitpay (https://bitpay.com/?oid=1058_1) benefits from it.

And this protocol is broken, but lets keep "heralding it".

Can you please elaborate? Any sources?

No-one has made any credible objections.

Both sides of the debate overstate their case IMO. The proponents of the idea talk up the security it adds, and the the detractors talk up the privacy issues. There is little change to either secuirty or privacy, the main change is: simplifying payments to web based businesses.

I would agree - the main problem the detractors have with the system is the usage of CA certs which (as I understand it) can be fairly easy swapped for some other such approach that can be added down the track.

Using a centralized technology and broken protocol in a decentralized environment. I and even some core devs have written how this was the wrong way to go. I suggest you search for them.