Bitcoin Forum

Economy => Services => Topic started by: aurora on November 13, 2012, 06:50:56 PM



Title: US bill pay
Post by: aurora on November 13, 2012, 06:50:56 PM
I'm am manager at phone store. Using QPAY our customers can pay any bills with cash : electric, gas, water, cable, phone for nearly every company in the US. There is no charge for this service you pay what your bill says. My question is how many bitcoiners here would love to pay their monthly bills with bitcoins? I would like to be first phone store in my state accepting bitcoins. Before I invest in this service need some opinion.


Title: Re: US bill pay
Post by: justusranvier on November 13, 2012, 06:53:41 PM
I would like to be first phone store in my state accepting bitcoins.
Would the service be limited to a single state?


Title: Re: US bill pay
Post by: aurora on November 13, 2012, 06:57:26 PM
I would like to be first phone store in my state accepting bitcoins.
Would the service be limited to a single state?
any state in the US


Title: Re: US bill pay
Post by: hazek on November 13, 2012, 07:06:46 PM
Before I invest in this service need some opinion.

Why not do it simply because it's a superior/cheaper method of accepting payments, advertise it and let the dice fall where they may? I mean it's not like it would cost a fortune to implement.


Title: Re: US bill pay
Post by: justusranvier on November 13, 2012, 07:07:25 PM
Six months ago this would have helped me a lot, but I've worked on reducing the number of monthly bills to the point that I don't have many left.

I'd be interested in buying Simple Mobile prepaid PINs, or if possible, auto insurance premiums and loan payments.


Title: Re: US bill pay
Post by: aurora on November 13, 2012, 07:23:02 PM
I'd be interested in buying Simple Mobile prepaid PINs,
I'm actually working on this. Only prepaid plans are eligible: Simple mobile, Boost, Virgin, tracfone etc


Title: Re: US bill pay
Post by: aurora on November 13, 2012, 07:24:56 PM
Why not do it simply because it's a superior/cheaper method of accepting payments, advertise it and let the dice fall where they may? I mean it's not like it would cost a fortune to implement.
Yeah, I'm doing simple wp ecommerce site where user can buy used cellphones and pay for prepaid plans


Title: Re: US bill pay
Post by: Trader Steve on November 14, 2012, 04:48:29 AM
I'm am manager at phone store. Using QPAY our customers can pay any bills with cash : electric, gas, water, cable, phone for nearly every company in the US. There is no charge for this service you pay what your bill says. My question is how many bitcoiners here would love to pay their monthly bills with bitcoins? I would like to be first phone store in my state accepting bitcoins. Before I invest in this service need some opinion.

I think that would be an excellent service to offer.


Title: Re: US bill pay
Post by: RantinRave on November 14, 2012, 05:55:48 PM
I would qualify this as a "good" idea. Not necessarily great though. I would highly suggest that you try and think like any start-up business:

- Why is paying bills with BTC an advantage?
- Is there any benefit to the customer?
- Benefit to the business?
- Can I relay any of the benefits that I get onto the business <---> customer?

Just back to that whole idea that somebody could take your idea and use it .. while undercutting you by 0.5%. Ya know?

Nonetheless, you could always just take the route and JUST DO IT. What will happen is .. People will say:
"Hey can I do this?"
"What about this?"
"Are you capable of implementing this?"

And can build off that. Know what sayin', G?


Title: Re: US bill pay
Post by: Elwar on November 14, 2012, 09:15:17 PM
I would like to be able to pay bills in Bitcoin.

It is my hope that I can eventually just have all of my $ paychecks converted to BTC and shift my money to different "accounts" to be spent in different ways as a way of budgeting.

If you could integrate some simple budgeting software it would be excellent.


Title: Re: US bill pay
Post by: aurora on November 14, 2012, 10:56:59 PM
Does anyone know ready solution that converts usd amount into btc and display it for customer?
 User enters amount in USD and when ready to checkout it shows BTC amount to pay.


Title: Re: US bill pay
Post by: franky1 on November 15, 2012, 12:13:07 AM
using API from exchanges. then add on any fee's incurred plus your profit to equal the viewable BTC cost.

heres a load of MTGox API for you to try
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/MtGox/API/HTTP/v1 (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/MtGox/API/HTTP/v1)

EG grab the high price from this ticker https://mtgox.com/api/1/BTCUSD/ticker (https://mtgox.com/api/1/BTCUSD/ticker)

i grabbed this code from somewhere that uses BTC-E.com not mtgox
Code:
$json_url = 'https://btc-e.com/api/2/btc_usd/ticker';

$ch = curl_init( $json_url );
$options = array(
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
);
curl_setopt_array( $ch, $options );
$string =  curl_exec($ch); // Getting jSON result string
$object = json_decode($string, true);
$price=$object['ticker'][high];

you know it will cost 6% in fee's to fully cash out to your bank account
and you want to make 4% profit for yourself

so if $price shows BTC is $10.80 SUBTRACT 10% for costs / profit, making it worthy/profitable to process BTC for $9.81
then divide that by the cash value they input to give you a BTC amount.

so a $100 bill will cost 10.19367991BTC

so when you sell the 10.19BTC at the actual $10.80 exchange price you will get $110 to then cash out, cover fees and still have about 4% profit