Bitcoin Forum

Update: the service is permanently closed

I've opened a new beta service, CoinCard (http://coincard.ndrix.com), which lets you convert Bitcoins into automated PayPal Amazon payments or gift cards.  I've posted a 4 minute video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5uoEqb3VaQ) showing how to use the service to buy a pizza with Bitcoins.

Basically, you send Bitcoins, wait for 2 confirmation blocks and then receive a PayPal Amazon payment or a gift card automatically.  The highest Mt Gox bid rate is used as the exchange rate.  The service currently charges a 1% convenience fee.  I picked that fee at random. It may change depending on supply and demand.

PayPal payments are sent using MassPay, so you pay no fees to receive the payment, however the convenience fee is a little higher (http://coincard.ndrix.com/page/prices) to cover the costs on my side.

I'm interested in suggestions for improvement, especially other gift cards you'd like to buy.  PayPal and Domino's are the only options for now.  Amazon and New Egg might be possible.  I can also support Dwolla payments, if there's interest.

The service is open today for the first round of testing.  I'll close it over the weekend since I want to be around in case anything goes wrong.

It says the maximum amount for a PayPal payment is $50?

That's temporary for today's testing.  I'll remove the cap next week.

OK, well I tried it. Now waiting for block 110420...

I got the PayPal payment just fine, right after 110420. Thanks :)

Waiting to the block 110424. In the meantime - is there any API to this service? Something like JSON-RPC, I'll send amount (in BTC) and paypal email, you sent me back final amount (in USD) and BTC address for the payment.

Edit: Paypal sent me notification about incoming TX almost immediately when the block 110424 was found. Good job!

Hi slush.  I had you and your mining pool in mind while making this service.  Now that I have some of the mechanics figured out, I plan to add an API.  It will be nearly identical to what you describe.  I'll post here when it's ready for testing.


Thanks

Have you done anything to make sure someone can not inflate the mtgox price by bidding just below the ask price for 1 BTC just before using your service?

Good question.  When I said, "highest bid on Mt Gox" above, that was an approximation.  It actually calculates the market clearing price on the bid side of the order book for the requested order size.  So placing a 1 BTC bid on Mt Gox before an order would change the exchange rate only slightly.

The clearing rate calculation is the one discussed here (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3287.0).

Tried a BTC->Paypal earlier and had no problems - thanks :)

Very reasonable fees/prices ! Would use it but not a paypal fan, when you get some Amazon.com or other options will def use. Nice Work!

Just made a small 50 BTC test, waiting for block 110457  :)

EDIT: Yep, got it right after 110457 was found too.

I don't know if you'd want to buy cards also, but if you do, I'll sell you two fry's gift cards. I believe the values are 50 USD and 15 USD, but if you were interested, I'd have to go to the store and double check.

Incredibly easy to use. Great job.

Thank you. A lot.

Thanks for the offer.  I don't actually carry any gift card inventory since the cards are purchased for customers on-demand.  So I can't make use of those particular cards.


Thanks.


You're welcome

Today's test is finished.  Thanks to everyone for the feedback and orders.  I fixed a couple bugs that came up.  The service should be ready to stay open starting on Monday.  I'll also remove the $50 limit then.

I haven't used this yet, but...  kudos for filling a useful niche in the bitcoin community!

Yeah, this is really cool. Next time I order pizza, I'm definitely trying this out! Any chance you could add Papa Johns?

I have not yet used this, though I've used CoinPal 3 times by now.  Went ahead and looked at the going rates, and they're highly competitive against Bitcoin2CC which I see as the only real competitor at this point in time.  Looking good mndrix, hope this all works out well for you.

A vendor of mine accepts for payment only credit card and PayPal currently.  I do know from her kvetching that she loses 3% or so in fees each time I pay her.  I'ld like to make use of CoinCard to help with that.   If I use for the paypal address HER address instead of mine, then when she receives the payment from CoinCard she'll get the entire amount that was sent -- no fees to her!
  http://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_batch-payment-benefits-outside (http://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_batch-payment-benefits-outside)

The only problem is that when she sees the incoming payment transaction there's no way for her to know that the payment came from me -- it doesn't show my customer number or an invoice number that the transaction is paying.

Would it be possible for CoinCard to include an optional memo / comments field that will be included with the payment?

Well, two problems.  If for some reason she says she couldn't find payment, I wouldn't have a transaction number that she could use to search for the transaction either.  Would it be possible for the acknowledgement page (after my bitcoin payment to CoinCard is received) to display the PayPal transaction number as well?

At some point hopefully we can just skip this silly step of using PayPal as intermediary and I can just to send her payment in bitcoins directly where she, in turn, uses bitcoins to pay her vendors and staff.  Until that time, however, I'm happy to have CoinCard.

I'll add Papa John's to my list of gift cards to support.  Thanks for the suggestion.


Good idea.  The MassPay API supports a memo field which is included in the payment notification email from PayPal.  Most gift cards offer a similar field.  I've added this to my list of features to support.


I'll look into this.  I think the Mass Pay API returns the PayPal transaction ID.  If so, it should be fairly easy to support.

Haven't had a chance to use the service yet, but I hope to soon, possibly today. Great idea. As others have said, thanks for filling a niche.


FYI, Dominos now has a large pizza with two toppings for $5.99 with the code 9159 at checkout online. YMMV. They had this deal earlier in the month and decided to bring it back.

Good deal and good opportunity to try out this system.

I used the service a couple times while it was open on Friday. It worked great.

My suggestions for gift cards I buy regularly for my wife: Starbucks and Jamba Juice (incidentally, I get both of these at Costco for a significant discount off face value, so I might not buy them from CoinCard)

On the other hand, my wife might be less skeptical about bitcoins if they were bringing her a steady stream of frappuccinos and smoothies :)

One other thought: I do expect a drop in bitcoin prices as a result of this service being released into the wild. Bitcoin miners like myself who were saving up to meet the 800 dollar minimum required to get a wire transfer out of MtGox will now be able to sell their bitcoins much more cheaply and easily. If the service does not limit the volume in some way, this could have a major short-term impact on bitcoin prices as multiple people who were waiting to sell their bitcoins all use it at once.

How long until Coinpal/Coincard integrates with MtGox, or even replaces it?

This isn't the first "redeem bitcoins for PayPal" option out there:

• Bitcoin Market
  http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_Market
• Bitcoin Morpheus
  http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_Morpheus [Edit: oops, can only *buy* bitcoins using PayPal here]
• #Bitcoin-OTC
  http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin-otc

But it certainly is convenient (immediate and a competitive rate).  I agree that it will increase Bitcoin's utility as a currency.

I don't know if I'd go so far as to expect it to significantly affect the exchange rate in the markets for bitcoins, except possibly in this one way:
     Assuming CoinCard executes the trade on Mt. Gox immediately, it is possible that CoinCard's volume will cause volatility on the weekend as the outflow cannot be matched with corresponding incoming funding to Mt. Gox until the following week.  It wouldn't surprise me to continue seeing a pattern of the BTC/USD market rate dropping on the weekend and jumping back when newly added funds arrive Monday afternoon through Thursday.

Yeah, I was aware of the other options, but bitcoin market isn't open to everyone, otc trading via IRC seems a bit too complicated for most average people, and as far as I can tell, there is no option to sell bitcoins to morpheus, although I may have missed it on his site.

Having a super-convenient and competitive service like this is going to make a much bigger impact, IMHO.

I would have used CoinCard just now. I printed postage using PayPal -- with the transaction totalling about $1.50. Because I previously had sent money and drained my PayPal account to $0, I now will have a second ACH transaction by PayPal that will draw the $1.50 from my bank account.

I'ld much rather have been able to pre-fund my PayPal account with the $1.50 using CoinCard and then that ACH transaction would not have been necessary.

Bitcoin's utility just keeps increasing, day after day.

Buy bitcoins on a saturday and sell on a monday = $profit ?

I can't wait till you re-open, I want to try a Bitcoin Pizza!

Do you trust transactions through any Bitcoin banks, like MyBitcoin? If you use them, you will speed up transactions since you don't have to wait for a couple blocks to be generated to confirm their validity.

CoinCard is now open and the 50 BTC limit is removed.  The only limit in place is the amount of coins in my account.  I'll try and keep the service up permanently now.


Thanks for the suggestion.  I'll definitely consider it.

Excellent service just like CoinPal. Just sold 50 BTC successfully  :)

Great service mndrix.


+1 for NewEgg gift cards! They refuse non-US credit cards so gift cards seem to be the only way to order. If you start selling them I'll definately be a customer. :)

This looks like a good service. Things like this will make entry into the Bitcoin market much easier for new users.

So, is this the next version of/replacement for Coinpal, Mndrix?

CoinCard is basically the opposite of CoinPal.  CoinPal does PP->BTC and CoinCard does BTC->PP.  I also plan to offer additional gift cards through CoinCard eventually.

Yeah, I don't know why I forgot that Coinpal is just PP->BTC. I understood intuitively what was going on, but I just had a mental lapse I guess. Still, being able to sell BTC for PP or PP for BTC easily should be great for the currency.

The service had a hiccup just now as the bitcoin daemon crashed on my server.  I've restarted it and a couple outstanding orders were sent.  Sorry for the delay.

The bitcoin daemon hung again.  CoinCard is closed until I can figure out what's going on

I'm not quite sure what's causing the bitcoin daemon to stop responding to API requests.  I'm opening CoinCard and leaving CoinPal closed to see if it happens again.

Check your disk free space. I had similar problem when I was very near to 0.

I mentioned this to slush on IRC, but thought I'd post it here for posterity too.  The server has about 3.6GB of disk free, so the cause appears to be elsewhere.

I underestimated CoinCard's popularity and my PayPal account has reached the minimum balance I allow.  If you try to place an order, you'll see a message about insufficient funds.  CoinPal is opening again shortly which should replenish the PayPal balance within the next few hours.  Try your CoinCard order again then.

Several orders yesterday were affected by transaction
processing delays discussed elsewhere (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4009.0).  For a few orders, 45 blocks passed before 2 confirmations arrived.  My script quit looking for confirmations after 20 blocks.  I've increased that to 50.  I also added an FAQ entry suggesting that those selling their mining pool profits may want to include a transaction fee.

I'm confused, I submitted a order for a paypal payment like a hour agoish and it has 8 confirmations.

How long should it take for paypal to go through?

I prob shouldn't be so anxious, but I'm waiting to buy starcraft 2 with paypal and I'm excited.


blah, waiting is a pain.
3 hours later and it still hasn't gone though.

I wish I had tested it with like 1 btc first, bah.
I remember my transactions with coinpal being superfast.
Well, back to starcraft 2 tutorial watching.



Edit: I'm a fool and forgot to click the "I sent payment" button.

Lol

I'm gonna buy pizza for any of my friends who are willing to get a slice of free pizza. Here is what I'm going to write for the facebook event

I plan to show them the how-to video, order the pizza, explain to them how they can do something they are good at to earn bitcoins and at least exchange them for a pizza, and finally, set them up with MyBitcoin accounts if they want one. Oh yeah, eat the pizza, too.

Do you like what I want to say on the invite? Should I edit it?

Anyone who would like to help me defray costs can support me here 14ddya5gretqcH4dFe8Pr7eHgn4qPiPUgX
I am willing to use ClearCoin if you would like proof that it happens.

Thank you for your thoughts.

Great idea to help spread the word about Bitcoins.  I know I'm all ears when free food is involved :)  The site sold a Domino's gift card last night while I was sleeping and everything went smoothly.

Two nights ago, I bought a pizza for my kids using Bitcoin and CoinCard.  It was pretty fun.

Haha, that was me doing a test run before the real event.

mndrix, I'm curious how many trades on coincard do you have daily. Can you reveal at least rough numbers? :-)

Sure.  Over the last 8 days, I've done about 60 orders averaging about 40 BTC each.  I've had a couple large orders, but most have been between 5-20 BTC

How do you invest in CoinCard?

From me you got 150 BTC. (3x 50)
With them I ended up buying an unlocked Blackberry for 20 GBP  ;D The rest is still on PayPal for the next bargain.

Thanks, 60 trades is very nice number for such young service :-).

Btw I'd like to ask you if you're considering some better design for coinpal/coincard in the future. I think you offer great services, but many people asked me if there are some troubles with the site. Friend told me that it looks like the site has broken link to it's CSS file :-).

Will this be the next Mt.Gox? :D

I'm sorry.  I didn't understand the question.  Are you asking how you can invest in CoinCard as a business venture?

My bad, poor wording on my part. Yes, that is what I am asking

Ha ha. I probably should make it look better.  I don't enjoy CSS, so I'll put it off as long as possible :)  Maybe I should hire tcatm, although I'm not sure I can afford someone of his talent.

I'm not currently seeking investors, but will definitely keep it in mind for both CoinCard and CoinPal for the future.

+10 he does really nice stuff.

Several people have asked me about the upcoming CoinCard API.  I finished some refactoring today to prepare for the API.  If all goes smoothly, I may have something for people to test late next week.  Thanks for all the interest.

Funds are low again.  There haven't been many CoinPal orders to replenish PayPal funds, so I've transferred some additional funds from my bank.  They probably won't post until early next week.  (Fast transfers is one more reason I want Bitcoin to succeed).

I don't really think it's very important to spruce up the design of the sites. They are nice and simple, which is a good thing :)

I would however suggest you make it clear that there's an essentially "opposite" service available on each site. Maybe add something like a tab bar at the top of the sites where we can switch between CoinPal and CoinCard (or some other design that makes sense). Just so you're sure everyone realizes there are two similar-but-different services available.

Thanks for the excellent service :)

I think being able to make paypal payments to other people would be a very big thing!
but i don't use paypal myself, so i don't know whats the established way merchants match incoming transactions - if its automated you most likely have to register your paypal email there?

being a web dev, i prefer simple/functional layouts myself, but i often experience 'novice' users being alienated by those 'little' things ;)

also, just out of curiosity, why did you make an extra site for this and not add it as features to the existing coinpal?

last but not least, i've got ~100 BTC through coinpal (using friend/family paypals) and everything went fine; thank you! :)

Yes, and that's the point. First typical question of newcomer is "where I can buy/sell small amount of BTC for test?". So service like coinpal/coincard is very important in the first impression. Two people said me "Are you kidding, this?" when I pointed them to the coinpal :).

As I wish to Bitcoin to be successfull and go to mainstream, I really care about those 'little things', because they SELL. But once again, mndrix is doing great job.

Good idea.  I've added it to my list of issues.  The tabbed interface is a good suggestion for once the appearance is spruced up a bit.

I wanted to see how much smaler CoinCard's code base would be compared to CoinPal since the former requires no fraud-prevention logic.  CoinCard is 1474 lines of Perl, CoinPal is 2234 lines.

I also wanted to create an artificial barrier between the two applications so that common Bitcoin logic could be factored out.  That's how Finance::MtGox (http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?Finance::MtGox) was born.  I figured that would have added benefit to the community, in the long run.


You're welcome :)

I agree with slush here.  One reason I started CoinPal was that I wanted an easy way for people to get started with Bitcoin.  If the appearance turns many away, the site isn't reaching its full potential.  Fortunately, plenty of us early adopters don't mind the appearance as much, so it lets the site start out slowly before adding polish to reach a wider audience.

Any progress towards Amazon or New Egg GCs yet? I dont have an immediate need but could definitely see myself ordering them if they were available

amazon would be excellent !

oh god, Newegg Giftcards would be awesome... all computer geeks will buy that xD

I've been checking prices every couple days waiting to see a price I like to sell some more bitcoins. It would be nice if I could send you bitcoins and tell you the price I want and have your software send me the money when the price hits that number.

I'm sure something similar for coinpal would be nice too, where users could send you money via paypal and a bitcoin price they want, and get sent the bitcoins when the price hits their target.

An easier option might be to buy/sell credit on MtGox, if you aren't looking to become a full market and compete with them.

I guess the funds aren't available yet? I see the following error:


Perhaps, since this isn't an error that I can correct, this message could be reworded? Better yet, the form might simply be replaced with a generic temporarily unavailable message?

Would it help if I went and used CoinPal? :D

I just bought a Domino's card with coincard.  It worked perfectly!   8)

I'm guessing that the large funds deposit won't post until Tuesday or Wednesday


Thanks for the suggestions.  When you see this error, you can try placing a smaller order.  You can also wait an hour or two for some CoinPal orders to come in (which replenishes my balances) and then try again.

It's on my list to show my balances on the home page, but it's non-trivial to implement

Showing your balances is also a good way to attract hackers to try to break in!

I tried 1 USD. I'm not sure how much smaller I should try! :) Though it's working tonight.

CoinCard was down for a couple hours while I upgraded the server.  It's back now

You can figure this out with trial and error anyway. It would just be a convenience for regular people. He doesn't need to show his entire assets, only what is currently available.

Oh btw, you can always ge a few more cents by using the USD instead of bitcoins.... just put you bitcoin amount, note down how much $$ that makes, and then try with the USD with 2~5 cents more... should give you back lower or the same bitcoin amount you put originally

Yes, that's a concern.

Q.) Willie, wy do you rob banks"?
A.) "Cause that's where the money is."  - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Sutton

And the list of the IP address for thousands of online micro-"banks" is public:
  http://maps.google.com/maps?q=https://smsz.net/btcStats/bitcoin.kml (http://maps.google.com/maps?q=https://smsz.net/btcStats/bitcoin.kml)

CoinCard now has an API.  It lets you programmatically place orders for converting your Bitcoins into gift cards or PayPal payments.  See the documentation (http://coincard.ndrix.com/page/api) for more details.

Thanks for suggestions all the suggestions offered above.  I'll add some features and gift cards as time permits.

A customer sold a large batch of Bitcoins through CoinCard last night but entered an invalid email address for his PayPal account.  Emails to the customer bounce and PayPal reports the payment as unclaimed.  I was curious what happens in this case, so I thought I'd post it here in case others are interested too.

PayPal holds the Mass Pay payment for 30 days.  If it remains unclaimed after that time, the money is refunded to the payer.  Of course, once that happens, I'll resend the payment to the rightful owner, but there's nothing I can do until then.

This highlights one more way in which Bitcoin is superior to other payment methods: one can easily verify that a recipient's address is valid before sending payment.

I have an Amazon Prime membership. An Amazon card would be really nice option.

How does one go about verifying that the address is valid?

The Bitcoin JSON API provides the `validateaddress` method which you can use from the command line like this:


Of course, this doesn't prove that the address belongs to anyone in particular :)

Ah, so it isn't something that anybody could easily do to make sure they didn't type in an address that was not valid.

You can use this to do the same thing:
http://blockexplorer.com/q/checkaddress

Yes, anybody can do this, and any halfway decent Bitcoin service will already do it.

This particular case was someone who entered an incorrect PayPal address, not an incorrect Bitcoin address.

I've updated the API (http://coincard.ndrix.com/page/api) so that it includes error codes along with the error messages.  This should make it easier for your code to handle errors without having to parse English :)

I've finished preliminary support for buying Newegg gift cards through CoinCard.  The biggest problem is that Newegg takes 24-48 hours to process the gift cards on their side before emailing the gift card code to the buyer.

For those of you interested in Newegg, would you still buy the gift cards even with this delay?

Is there an option for Newegg Canada or is it strictly gift cards for Newegg US?

Yes, the delay sucks but cutting out paypal would be great!  I would use the newegg option.

The cards can only be used for Newegg US.  At least that's what I understand from reading the terms of service on the test cards I've purchased.

Response so far has been positive both here and in OTC, so I'll proceed with the final implementation details for Newegg.  Thanks for the feedback!

can I make them ship goods outside US with those cards :)

Yes that's correct. Even Newegg Canada has a separate Canadian giftcard center available here, https://secure.newegg.ca/GiftCertificate/GiftCardStep1.aspx

Do you think CoinCard could support both US and Canadian cards?

Without looking into it at all, it should be able to support Newegg Canada.  I'll see how popular Newegg US gift cards first.

Feature request:  "sendmany" for CoinCard.

[Tycho]'s use of coincard's paypal API is pretty neat, and I was thinking of doing something similar.  However, if I have a queue of paypal payments to make, it would be much more useful to send a single, large BTC transaction to coincard, and specify multiple (address, amount) pairs for paypal recipients.

Bonus points if this can be done entirely via JSON  :)

off-topic, but when you had 1337 posts, it changed to Leet lol

That's a good idea.  I'll think about how to implement it on my side.  The PayPal API supports it since Mass Pay is designed for creating one transaction that sends to many recipients.

One side effect could be lower PayPal payouts for "sendmany" customers.  Since I determine the exchange rate based on market depth, a large CoinCard order combined with thin Mt Gox bids could produce a lower exchange rate than placing several small orders spaced 15 minutes apart (giving bots time to fill in the order book again).

There has been heavy CoinCard usage over the last few days (rally, mining pool integration, etc).  I'm trying to keep enough money flowing through my PayPal account to cover demand.  I'd prefer not to increase fees, so thanks for your patience while I work out the kinks.

Words cannot express how much I love coincard/coinpal. I think you should charge whatever fees the market will bear. Your only risk is that you will attract competitors if your fees get high enough.

I'd still love to be able to send you coins along with a sell price I want, then get paid when the price after your fee hits my target. Yeah, it's more complex, but if you hold more (of other people's) bitcoins and lots of PayPal cash, you can clear more orders without hitting MtGox at all, and avoid paying the transaction fee there. You also avoid the risk of bitcoin price fluctuations since the bitcoins you hold wouldn't be your own.

You are getting big enough that it doesn't make as much sense to clear everything through MtGox. You're just giving money away every time you do that. If you match buyers with sellers directly, you get to pocket all of the spread as well as the MtGox transaction fee, as well as your own fees.

I would love to see a separate coinpal/coincard bid/ask spread and order book. Anyone placing an order could choose between a "right now" price, or setting their own price and waiting for it to clear.

You know you want to. :)

add option to send payment delayed when there're no funds available?

for you there're no risks, also you can return btc* for free if you can't complete the order for a reasonable time

* - you have to add another field - wallet to sent btc back

bitcoind hung last night preventing some orders.  It's restarted now and orders are coming through again.  On Friday, I'll try and upgrade my bitcoind to a version with the deadlock patch to prevent this from happening again.

Also on Friday, I'll increase the fee for PayPal payments by .5 percentage points.  Because PayPal fraud required me to reduce CoinPal purchase limits, the amount of PayPal funds flowing into my account is dramatically lower than it used to be.  Even furiously transferring funds from my bank account to PayPal hasn't met the demand, so a fee change is about the only tool I have left.

I'll keep working on improved anti-fraud measures for CoinPal to try and increase the volume for legitimate buyers.  Then hopefully I can reduce CoinCard fees again.

Thanks for hanging in there while I knock some of the rough edges off these services.

Note that this is simply the latest version of bitcoin, from bitcoin/bitcoin.git.  No need for patches, or anything but latest-from-git.

You might also check out BlueMatt's nightly builds: http://bitcoin.bluematt.me/bitcoin-nightly/

I used , this service today. Now its waiting for my money :D served on paypal :D. Also how long does those blocks take?

I will let you guys know how the transaction went :D.

///--- Transaction went smooth , and i received my money really fast :D Thanks for this great site will vouch for it :D.

That's fine. Having a working service trumps having it efficient.

Can I use CoinCard as a sort of BTC->USD payment processor? For example, if I were to buy something on eBay, could I enter the seller's Paypal email address instead of mine? Would that cause any issues?

It might work but I'd advise against it.  If you need to dispute the payment later, it won't have come from your account and so you won't be able to.  And if such a dispute succeeded anyway, assuming you could even place it, the money wouldn't be sent back to you; it'd be sent to CoinCard.

Best to send it to your account first.

Well, that's the issue... I vehemently dislike Paypal. I have an account, but for some reason a year or two ago I started getting this:


I have no idea why they would do this, and don't care enough to jump through their hoops.

I've been considering doing something similar with coinpal. Basically make a website that only accepts bitcoins, and tell them to enter my bitcoin address in coinpal if they want to pay with PayPal. Haven't tried it yet, but I don't see why it wouldn't work.

One more issue, beyond those cdhowie mentioned, is that there's currently no way to associate an order number or message with your CoinCard payment.  So, the receiving party will get money from Hendricks Solutions, LLC but have no idea that it's payment for BitterTea's eBay auction item.

Adding arbitrary messages to the outgoing payments is on my list of features to add eventually.

You can also use the CoinPal API (http://coinpal.ndrix.com/page/api) to pre-fill the CoinPal order form with the Bitcoin address and BTC amount.  I know of at least two vendors who do this.

The biggest limitation is that the purchase limits apply to your customers and those purchase limits may not be enough to cover the purchase price on your site.

Hey, someone I know sent 120BTC, and the time expired before the confirmations were done. Will he receive a refund or will he get his PP payment? He would prefer getting his PP payment if possible

The transaction needs to be broadcast before expiration. The confirmations can and almost always will be afterwards. If they don't get the payment contact mndrix per the instructions on his site.

Your friend contacted me directly by email (the best way to get a response).  I've responded to him privately.  In general, I'll either refund your Bitcoins or send the PayPal payment, depending on markete rate fluctuations (so people don't game the system).

I've increased fees for PayPal payments (http://coincard.ndrix.com/page/prices) by .25 percentage points (.5 seemed too drastic).  Hopefully this brings supply and demand back into line.  I'll be making some related changes on CoinPal too, with the same goal in mind.

Any update on NewEgg gift cards being sold through CoinCard?

Being a techie community, surely buying hardware with bitcoins would be popular.

It would indeed be nice to have NewEgg gift cards. I currently have no way to buy from NewEgg, they won't accept my credit card and they won't accept PayPal if I don't have a confirmed US address. Maybe with a gift card it could work.

This is not nearly as important as making PayPal payments work flawlessly, though.

I'm getting this error today:

Please correct the errors below and resubmit.
Insufficient funds in our accounts. Try again later

Any plans on topping up the account in the near future?

I really do enjoy the convenience of this service and would appreciate the opportunity to continue its use.

Seconded.

This site is really , great. I used his service again yesterday and everything went smooth +1 for the OP.

I still plan on adding Newegg gift cards.  Recent market conditions have made it hard for me to keep up with current demand for CoinCard's services.  Once I finish some additional automation and can handle the volumes again, I'll resume work on Newegg.  Thanks for asking.

I'm away from my computer on Sunday (US Mountain time) and sometimes run low on funds toward the end of the day.  Within the next couple hours, CoinCard should be able to purchase Bitcoins again.  Thanks for your patience as I continue enhancing the service.

Okay, it's nice to know the service isn't going anywhere. Sorry for the PM, I practically sent it at the same time you answered my question; I had been refreshing the thread every few hours and noticed two new posts within a few minutes.

I've increased fees for PayPal payments (http://coincard.ndrix.com/page/prices) by another .25 percentage points.  Even with the previous fee increase and higher purchase limits on CoinPal, I still ran out of funds over the weekend.

CoinCard might just be the easiest way to turn bitcoins into [PayPal] cash.  I bet you would get plenty of customers at +1% even.

I have to concentrate on some big projects that are coming up (not related to Bitcoin) and won't be able to devote much time to the forum for the next several months.  I'll still manage CoinCard as I have over the last couple months.  I'll try to check in on this thread about once a week, usually on Fridays.  If you notice problems with CoinCard, please contact me at coincard@ndrix.com so that I can fix them right away.

A small change: Clicking the I've Sent Payment button is no longer required.  As long as you send your payment to the right Bitcoin address, you'll receive your gift card or PayPal payment after 2 confirmations.

I used to get a couple emails each day from customers who didn't click the button (forgot to click, 'net connection died before they could click, etc).  Their experience on the site should be more pleasant now.

Of course, you can still click the button if you want to see the order status page.

CoinPal volume has been really high for the last few days.  To balance supply and demand again, I've reduced CoinCard fees back to $1 + 1.25% on large PayPal transactions.  The exact prices are on the site (http://coincard.ndrix.com/page/prices).

Bought a $50 Dominos gift card last night. I love buying pizza with BTC. :)

I've updated prices (http://coincard.ndrix.com/page/prices) for supply and demand again.  It's now $1 + 1.4% for large PayPal purchases.

I plan to make these changes automatically so I don't have to clutter the forum with these sorts of announcements.  It will probably be another couple weeks before I can get to it though.

Just bought 10 bitcoins yesterday, everything went fine :)

Im hoping to buy a much bigger amount soon, but I see theres a limit of 30 bitcoins per day? is this changing soon?

edit. just read the FAQ, hehe. nevermind

PayPal froze my accounts, so CoinCard will be closed for quite some time.  Full details are available elsewhere on the forum (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2555.msg101084#msg101084).

While coincard is down, I'm experimenting with selling bitcoins on ebay. See the thread about it here:

http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7072

CoinCard (http://coincard.ndrix.com/) reopened today.  For a 1% fee, you can quickly convert your Bitcoin funds into Amazon Payments or gift cards for Domino's, Papa John's or Best Buy.  The service is open 24/7 and automatically processes your order after 2 confirmations.  It usually takes around 20-25 minutes from the time you pay until the time you receive your funds or gift card.

My PayPal account is still restricted, so I won't be sending PayPal payments any time soon.

I made substantial changes to the backend to handle scaling issues I ran into earlier this year (before the PayPal freeze).  All my test orders have gone through perfectly, but the service may be up and down today, if I encounter any unexpected errors.

If you have any problems, email coincard@ndrix.com for the fastest response.  I'll also monitor this thread, but won't be as quick to reply here.

Great news!

It's too bad about PayPal, I still think the ability to easily sell bitcoins for PayPal is crucial for Bitcoin's growth. I hope that even so there will be people who benefit from your service and that you'll make some profit from it as well.

Any idea about the friendliness of Amazon payments to Bitcoin exchange?

Thanks Meni.  I vaguely recall Amazon closing a couple accounts that accepted Amazon payments in exchange for Bitcoins, but can't find any links at the moment.  I don't think anyone has tried an automated system in the other direction, so we'll see how it pans out.  I've given up trying to interpret Terms of Service since they seem to offer no reliable guidance.

I have a few more payment methods in the pipeline in case Amazon closes the account.  The gift card options don't depend on a PayPal debit card this time either, so the service should be more resilient this time around.

Does anyone with a non-US Amazon account know if they can receive Amazon Payments?  In the US, Amazon Payments balance is a great way to pay for goods on Amazon, but I'm not sure if it works the same way outside the US.  I'll gladly refund your Bitcoins if someone wants to experiment and it doesn't work.

Holy shit.  When I saw this thread on the front page again I was almost positive it was just going to be someone bumping an old topic with "HAY HOW DO I GET PAYPALS FOR MY BITCOINS?"

Good to see you back, dude. 

I'm in Europe. If I buy a certificate from you and try to redeem it with my next purchase you want to know if it was accepted?
let me be your guinea-pig.

edit: i like how you use the block numbers to indicate time, when you'll dispatch the certificates. you're doing it right :)

edit2: no worky. explanation: the amazon certificate comes from Amazon Payments and they need to "verify" the account. part of the process is an US based address (country is hardcoded, seems no way for me to register with the amazon payments site and redeem the code)

down the email I read:
After accepting this payment you may:
 *  Use your Amazon Payments balance to shop on Amazon.com
...

not mentioning amazon.de or any site near me. test finished. might work for someone else outside of the US to shop and pay but not sure how they want to pass the redeeming/verification step where required country is US.

edit3: the exchange from btc to amazon payment was smooth. just like (or better than) buying btc with paypal back in april

Thanks for trying, mila.  I've refunded your BTC payment and included an extra 2 BTC as a token of my appreciation.  I'll update the FAQ to mention that Amazon Payments are US only.

I confirm the refund & Thanks for the tip!

I've fixed a bug which caused some payments to be sent after 3 confirmations instead of 2.

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Responded via private message.

CoinCard had unexpected downtime this weekend.  The Bitcoin daemon crashed and just as I was brining it back up, my home Internet connection went down with an extended outage.  Bad timing!  I sent out a text message to Twitter with a brief update (https://twitter.com/#!/mndrix/status/155850976421625856).  Anyway, my home 'net connection came back up, so now I can access the CoinCard server again.  The site's back up and accepting orders.

Sometimes living 45 miles from a wi-fi hotspot is inconvenient :-)  Sorry for trouble.

CashStar, which handles gift cards for Domino's, Papa John's and Best Buy has taken a few hours to process a couple orders since CoinCard came back.  Most of the time, they process orders quickly, but these outliers are inconvenient.  I've updated the prices page (http://coincard.ndrix.com/page/prices) to better inform customers of potential delays.

Hello everyone  -  CoinCard seems like a great service!  ;D  I would also like to throw in an alternative my service http://www.btcinstant.com  - We are essentially "gift cards"  also as we allow you to exchange bitcoins for virtual credit cards.  Any questions just ask thanks!

I've added some server monitoring infrastructure to make sure we don't get a repeat of the downtime from two weekends ago.  If bitcoind crashes, the scripts restart it and reopen CoinCard once bitcoind is stable again.

Classy!

I'll take that as a compliment!  ;D

I've reached one of Amazon's sending limits for January.  I've temporarily disabled Amazon Payments as an option until I see whether they reset the limit based on the calendar month or a rolling 30-day month.  I'll also begin making changes to avoid this limit in the future.

The limit is based on calendar month, so my limit reset today.  I've reenabled Amazon Payments.  Changes are in progress to avoid the limit in the future.

I finished changing the Amazon Payments code so that CoinCard is no longer subject to the payment limits it hit last month.  Enjoy!

ill give coincard a bump and vouch for their legitimacy!!

used for gift card and went through perfect, would use again in a heart beat thanks

Domino's changed their gift card provider yesterday.  I'm in the process of updating and testing the checkout process for that particular gift card.  Until then, Domino's cards are disabled.  I'll post again once they're working.

I'm not able to automate purchases with Domino's new gift card provider.  I've removed Domino's from the site.

Amazon Payments are still available. So are gift cards for Best Buy and Papa John's.

High demand over the last couple days has exhausted my Amazon funds.  I've temporarily disabled Amazon Payments until a bank transfer clears (probably Monday).

Bank transfer has cleared, so Amazon Payments are back.  I've also changed the site to give an "Insufficient funds" message if this happens again.  That should be more useful than removing Amazon from the menu.

Wow, that was fast!  Amazon funds are sold out again.  I should have more funds tomorrow and then another transfer posting a couple days after that.  I'll keep working on changes to handle these volumes better.

Thanks the purchases.

Cleared you in less then 1 hour? Load more cash next time  :P

please review Coin Card's services

http://www.thebitcoinreview.com/site.php?site_id=840

thank you

More Amazon funds available and larger deposits on the way.

You can now donate Bitcoins to the Darcs project (http://darcs.net) via CoinCard.  There's no fee for this service.  This method of donations will be listed on the Darcs donation (http://darcs.net/donations.html) page soonish.

Background: Darcs is a version control tool based on a unique cherry-pick workflow.  I'm part of the Darcs core team.  The Software Freedom Conservancy manages Darcs finances but won't accept Bitcoin donations directly (https://plus.google.com/114991347543804898741/posts) (because the EFF stopped accepting Bitcoin).  After processing $100 in donations manually, I figured it was easier to just teach CoinCard to handle them.

CashStar changed their checkout process breaking my auto-purchase scripts.  I've disabled those two gift card options until I can figure out a way to automate the purchases again.

Amazon payments are still working great and we're handling a steady volume of them each week.

Great service! Simplifies bank transfers and shit for me because I can just use amazon now.

Yeah, wondering the same thing.

The service is still operating.  We've done stiff business the last couple weeks as Bitcoin exchange rates have been high.  I recommend that new customers do just what they'd do with any Bitcoin service they haven't used before: try a small transaction first to make sure everything works to their satisfaction.

I've had a couple customers do a $500 transfer for their first try and then find out that Amazon doesn't like their account for some reason.  They spend a few days working through Amazon's machine before they can get their funds.

Keep me posted on your progress via email.  If Amazon doesn't give you the funds after 30 days, they bounce back to my account and then I can refund your Bitcoins.

A MtGox withdrawal was delayed for 11 days, so that put me behind schedule on funding.  I expect to have Amazon funds available by Friday of next week (August 24th), at the latest.

CoinCard is now permanently closed.  As other (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=77793) demands (https://plus.google.com/113507488402105365870/posts/KvG7TLvfbKP) have come up, I've had to trim back on some activities.  There are far more Bitcoin exchanges (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade#Currency_exchanges) operating today than when I started CoinCard 18 months ago.  CoinCard just isn't as important as it once was.

I'm still convinced that Bitcoin is the future and will continue working on Bitcoin projects as opportunity permits.  Thanks for all your business.

It's sad to hear that this is the end for CoinCard, which used to be one of the pillars on which Bitcoin rested and which played a vital role in me personally getting involved with it.

I wish you luck in your future ventures and hope they will be as fruitful.

Anybody else do amazon payments? NOOOO!!!!

NOOOOOO!!!! Please just one more??

SpendBitcoins was, but no longer as they no longer serve the U.S. market.


BTCBuy.info has been offering them for quite some time:

 - http://btcbuy.info/GiftCards.cshtml

Recently another vendor, BTCJoe offers them:

 - http://www.btcjoe.com

Big difference, amazon gift cards cannot be withdrawn to cash, amazon payments can be.

Seriously! CoinCard filled a gap! I seriously almost cried when I saw it was done for good. 

- http://www.btcjoe.com <----- This guy must be out of his mind. $124.99 for a $100.00 amazon gift card? Not in this life time. CoinCard will sure be missed!!!!!

If anyone still needs Amazon gift cards at mt gox last, I am selling Amazon gift cards and can show proof of cash purchase via scanned receipt.  Email: AMZNBTC@gmail.com