Bitcoin Forum

Would UPS and FedEx be in a good position to become bitcoin escrow services?  They already know the time a package was delivered. They are trusted by most buyers and sellers to deliver the goods.

Which escrow method would work the best for this? pay to address (you pay UPS at checkout instead of the merchant), multi-sig, or pay to script.  Which method is available now with current wallet software?

Process for pay to address would be: Payment is made to UPS address instead of seller pay to address.  Merchant creates tracking numbers which get linked to the transaction.  Merchant ships packages.  An autonomous UPS process sends transaction total minus shipping and escrow fee to merchant when they do the final package delivery scan. 

Just because the package shipped doesn't mean you received what you paid for, so there would be arbitration involved but for majority of transactions delivery equals A+ seller.

Fedex and UPS are not in the escrow business. They likely will not want to deal with the hassle of attempting to resolve disputes.

Your scenario would also not protect the buyer because the buyer would not have the opportunity to inspect what is in the box prior to paying.

If you are going to use bitcoin to pay for something that is going to be received via the mail then you should buy from someone reputable (or be reputable yourself to be able to get the seller to ship to you prior to sending payment)

It means they will broaden their business scope to bitcoin. They will take more risks. I don't think they are interested at bitcoin business.

They are famous big companies who has credibility and accountability by customers. If they provide escrow service, they will attract many customers.

If they can charge 1-2% of the goods value, then it is worth it for them.

Some smaller courier services in Europe provide this type of service, not for bitcoin though. The courier stays with the customer for a limited time during opening of the shipping box and has the camera to document any discrepancies on the spot.

Neither FedEx nor UPS are in the position to offer it because:

1) legal complexities involving international shipping
2) employee time/productivity management that is uniform worldwide

I cannot imagine this kind of service being cost efficient. Most escrow services will never have any kind of employee involvement unless there is a dispute, and this would require that employees be involved in every single transaction. This would greatly increase costs to the escrow service, which would increase the fee that they would need to charge to customers. I just don't see any scenario where the escrow service would be both profitable and charge little enough that customers would be willing to pay for their services.

Apparently fees are competitive enough when compared with maintaining a physical retail location in a large European city. I heard about the plans of expanding it to the sending side, where the courier will witness and photograph the shipment before the box is closed and taped-up. Thus far the "sending side" is typically a phone/mail/web-order operation that does volume shipments and there's not much chance of fraud but more of miscommunication; overselling or general buyer's remorse.

They already are intimately familiar with the escrow business. Google "Cash On Delivery". It used to be A Thing.

That's a cool idea, I would love that 8) 8)

Yep. You can use your imagination to see what will happen with their position. Their profits maybe won't get a way higher, but they will become very popular.

They are already popular. Even more so when you consider the fact that USPS has a monopoly on being able to use mailboxes that are attacked to every house in the US.

A company generally does not care about how "popular" it is, their main concern is their overall profits, so if their profits will not increase then they will likely not enter into this business.

There was probably a reason why they got out of this business. I would think that for one, many delivery men/women would get robbed when they attempt to deliver a package. Not only would they be holding items of value from the package, but would also likely have a lot of other cash from other COD deliveries.

Another issue would be people "trolling" delivery services by ordering things from people and having them sent to random addresses. The person receiving the package would not be aware that the package was coming and would not be willing to pay

I rather imagine the most prevalent reason was that credit cards killed off cash as a transaction medium for mail order.

But Bitcoin is digital cash. We might be wise to learn the usage patterns that our grandfolk used to take for granted.

I would think it would be very risky for shipping companies to accept bitcoin "COD" in this manner. In order for this to be cost efficient the shipping company would need to accept a 0/unconfirmed TX once the goods are inspected. This would not be a good idea as transactions that require escrow are generally larger in size. If the shipping company even required one TX before giving the buyer the package then the driver would effectively need to wait at least 10 minutes, but also potentially up to an hour (blocks can and have an hour to be found from the time the previous block was found).

Also if you argue that COD delivery was killed by the credit card then I would argue that COD was a mere payment method and not an escrow service as it would be inefficient for the customer to mail payment, then wait to have the product shipped. 

The shipping company can use some centralised payment processor to speed up the process.

I can see it now:

Package delivered
Escrow released
Box holding your shiny new asic miner is actually a 'box of rocks'

Do you think 1-2% is big?

1-2% is not very much to charge, especially considering that most goods that shipping companies ship have very low values. The cost of a shipping company facilitating an average transaction would be much greater then the revenue generated from an average transaction. This would mean the shipping company would be forced to operate at a loss for most transactions.

Another issue is that when a fee is charged for escrow people are much less likely to tip the escrow service and tips on "free" escrow service can generally add up to a lot more then 1 or 2 percent

The escrow service would tell the seller how to ship logistics.In order to adopt to the comprehensive competition in the market, they are services to manage the self-owned containers land transport services.

freight quote (http://shippingexchange.com)

Escrow is when a third party hold the funds while the transaction is taking place to help ensure neither party loses their funds or property/services.  Since escrow agents hold funds for other they normally need a license and be bonded/insured in case they lose the funds.

The multi-sig transactions are not really escrow since they don't hold the funds.

Escrow is not dispute resolution.  It is a conflict of interest for an escrow agent to resolve disputes of parties who pay them for escrow services.  Escrow agents use independent third parties to resolve disputes.  You can look at the agreements at escrow.com to see how it works.

Yeah, why shouldnt they do this? This is a very good advice.