Bitcoin Forum

So why I can pay my visa / mastercard instantly.
But Bitcoin is not instant.?

With a credit card, you can broadcast a transaction instantly.
With bitcoin, you can broadcast a transaction instantly.

With a credit card, it takes 2 or 3 working days for the money to actually arrive in the recipient's account and be able to be spent.
With bitcoin, it takes 10 minutes on average for the money to arrive in the recipient's wallet, but they can spend it even sooner than that if they like.

With a credit card, it is possible to reverse a transaction up to 180 days after it was made.
With bitcoin, it is impossible after 10-60 minutes.

You need to consider what you mean by "instant". Bitcoin transactions are broadcast just as quickly as credit card transactions, and are finalized much faster.

What? 
I can pay instant when I Go to store I just swipe or touchless wave and instantly Everything!!

Because if you've actually done the research, having instant fees is not the main focus of having Bitcoin. Bitcoin exists for us to not need to(or at least to lessen) trust central banks; and to actually have true ownership of your money/wealth.

This is a specific feature of the system. Are you sure that visa and mastercard transactions are just as secure?

Bitcoin transactions are instant, what isn't instant is the confirmations... And the risk about accepting unconfirmed coins is a double spend, so, is better to wait at least for one confirmation to take that payment as valid, another way the same coin could be spent 2 times and the one who represents the payment to you will never arrive. The solution is something called lightning network, you should read about that topic.

You don't pay instantly though. The only thing that happens instantly is that the merchant registers a request for funds with your card issuer. Once the card issuer confirms the request has been received, then the merchant will release the goods. The merchant does not actually get any money from the card issuer for 2 to 3 business days, and they get charged a fee of around 2% on top of that.

Just because it appears instant and free to you, doesn't mean it is. It is slow and costly for merchants, and payments can be reversed for months after they are made.

Identity verification and paying are two different things. When you tap your card on the reader/put it in and enter your pin you essentially tell the store and card company you wan't a charge listed against you for that amount to be paid in ~72+ hours time.

Your transfer then shows up as pending, it has not yet been confirmed by anyone. In the UK most cheques can clear faster than card payments afaik (they're normally 24 hours)..

Ok so I Can't Fight it Bitcoin is Good 🤣
I have to admit the facts are facts

That's good. :D

In fact, OP's thread is vague in fact, it gives me two different ideas of what he/she is trying to ask.  First, same as with the others that using MasterCard or visa to make a payment then I must say that Bitcoin can do it faster than the others because in a matter of minutes the amount of bitcoin will be transferred to the recipient's wallet it's just that, the confirmation is a bit slow unlike with MasterCard or visa the confirmation is quicker but transferring of the specific amount would still take longer.

The other idea that makes me confused is the phrase "pay my visa/MasterCard instantly" because it denotes to me that he is not making a payment for something instead he/she refers to his/her credit card that he needs to pay for his debt since he has used it previously, only if I got it correct but if so, then there is nothing to discuss with Bitcoin since it is an asset owned in real-time and not as a debt that when used it should be paid in a later date.

That's true! But here the bank guarantees that the payment will arrive to the recipient's account. So for an end user, the credit card transaction is instant. Bank acts like a mediator!

For bitcoin, the confirmation time depends on the fees you are paying. It can be 10 minutes or even less once the fees is appropriate, but it can be much higher if the fees are less and if mempool is congested.


It's easier said than done! You have to go through a dispute resolution mechanism and the transactions are usually reversed only if there is a fraud happened in your account.


It's about end user experience! As a spender, we care nothing about the banking settlement process. For us, it's instant and we don't really need to know what happens in the background. Btw, the payment processor of my POD store settles the amount daily and in a complete paperless way!

I don't mean to say that visa/Mastercard are better than bitcoin but bitcoin also has a lot of limitations. If I look from the user experience perspective, Visa/mastercard are clear winners!

I think we're a couple of hard forks away from the lightning network being fully robust but when it is, transactions will then likely only take seconds to propagate (if that). And if the thing I'm thinking of isn't fully implemented yet, an increase in fees per transaction of 1 sat would be enough to make it unlikely to cause damage assuming the other node is able to detect it immediately.

These two are wholly different things. Visa/master card are 3rd party service providers, you pay in their cards and are able to store your money and pay via it. In case you lost your card (for btc - wallet), you are able to recover it by just providing your ID document and your funds will be safe. In case something happens and you have a doubt, you can lock it anytime. In case something happens and someone steals your money, you are able to get money back, your money isn't lost.

Bitcoin is a currency and the payment method at the same time. It uses p2p (peer to peer) technology and you don't depend on banks for transaction confirmations. It's network is different from visa/mastercards. But still something similar can be applied to bitcoin, i.e. I mean bitcoin debit cards.

...

BitPay BTC/payment processor now offers a Debit Card to those willing to go through the KYC process.  I did this, and it all works just fine.  The card will allow you to withdraw CA$H from ATM machines (after loading Bitcoin onto the card for conversion to cash).  You can withdraw up to $1000 at a time from an ATM.  The limit you can hold on the card is a nice chunky $25,000.

You can use the card just like any other credit or debit card anywhere where MasterCard is accepted.   So with their system you can use either direct BTC payments or the convenience of a credit/debit card.

Because, when you send the money using the CC to someone, the request will go into the bank, after that this should get confirmed by the banks and government or other organization and then they will send the money to the destination. Of curse, all the banks, organizations, governments will not work for free. They take some money as transaction fee, sometimes directly and sometime not directly. We call banks, government, etc... as third part object, this how a centralized systems looks like because in any transaction the third can control or monitor your transaction.
But of curse, due to the banking network system speed (they usually use internal networks and call it intranet) people will think the transaction are very fast.
In the other hand, when you send your bitcoin to someone you won't send them to the third party person and none will know the transaction details between you two. The transaction will be placed in mempool and then based on the transaction fee you pay the transaction will be placed into the blocks, and will wait for the miners to confirm this transaction. The more transactions people do more time they should pay because the miners will chose the transactions with higher transaction fee. That's why it's called point to point.
But still, if you want your transaction to be instant you can put enough transaction fee and make it instantly done.

To be simple:
Shity bank systems: Send ===> Banks/Government/... ===> Receive
Bitcoin: Send === miners ==> Receive

The bank acts as a trusted third party, exactly the thing bitcoin was created to do away with.

Phone my bank, report my card was stolen two days ago, reverse all the charges. It is far easier to pull off than double spending a non-RBF bitcoin transaction.

And broadcasting a bitcoin transaction is also instant from a spender's point of view.

If you are happy with placing complete trust in a third party, letting them hold all your money, monitor all your spending, completely invade your privacy, and having absolute power to refuse a transaction or freeze your account.

You're right, but depending on what you're purchasing and how congested the network is, credit card fees may be smaller. Heck, most items are priced assuming you're going to be using a credit card, because you can't be charged more for using it (in most places in the world at least, some areas even give discounts for cash purchases to go around it) -- if you're paying credit card charges whether or not you're using it, then using it effectively has no cost (for the end user at least).

The reality is that Bitcoin and credit cards have different use cases nowadays, for better or worse. As previously mentioned by others though, BTC can still compete via the Lightning Network, which is actually a really good solution for small purchases.

Thats the very idealistic about blockchain. But we cant be also sure that it has advantage of master card. The only thing is those are centralized and are required you to have KYC to user their platform. While in bitcoin some also uses it but there is always an option to transact with other people or establishment without necessary giving un your information. Not a bad deal but it also have significant disadvantage cause it could also be used by scammers and hackers. Which is impossible to do on mastercard system.

You need to do some research mate, bitcoin payment is instant too, it takes only seconds for a bitcoin transaction to get verified in the blockchain, there are third party payment platform that allow bitcoin payment today and all it requires is using barcode scan to pay in stores or send exact amount online, DYOR

A lot of places where I regularly spend bitcoin (both online and in person) give discounts for purchasing with bitcoin as opposed to a credit card, often in the region of 5%, but some up to even 10%, which is not insignificant and vastly outweighs any cashback or rewards I might get if I used a credit card instead, even after you factor in that I pay the transaction fee with bitcoin, as opposed to the merchant paying the transaction fee with a credit card.

It is far easier to conduct a scam using a credit card than it is with bitcoin. Double spending a non-RBF transaction requires a degree of technical competence and can be done for on average 10 minutes after the transaction is made. Phoning your credit card company and saying your card was stolen and you need the charges reversed can be done by anyone for up to 6 months after the transaction is made. You can steal credit card details with an online form, over the phone, or in person far more easily than you can steal a bitcoin private key. You can even open a credit card in someone else's name and rack up tens of thousands of dollars of debt which they are liable for - such a thing is impossible with bitcoin.

Do they give the same discounts for fiat purchases? If not, then they're probably enthusiasts who would be willing to take less profit just to see Bitcoin usage. IIRC credit card companies charge somewhere in the ballpark of 2%~4%, so they shouldn't be saving as much as 10% by not paying credit card fees.

To be clear though, this is a great thing, and is just the kind of incentive that can spur actual usage. Sure it's not as straightforward as swiping a card, but if it's easier on the pockets, it will always be a legitimate consideration.

You can pay instantly, but the money isn't received instantly. In fact, the transaction is not finalized for months because of the possibility of a chargeback. At least with Bitcoin, the transaction can be considered finalized after the first confirmation.

Typically, the credit card payee is willing to take the risk of not actually receiving the money. Bitcoin is no different -- the receiver can take the risk of accepting an unconfirmed transaction.

In short, both can be instant, but Bitcoin transactions are finalized more quickly.

Most people wont care about any of this that you wrote. I am not saying that they shouldn't care, but that is just how it is. Credit card transactions have fees, but so does Bitcoin. From the perspective of a user who wants to send/receive money from Point A to Point B, he won't care where the fees go to. Whether or not a central entity or a decentralized one takes his fees, wont matter to most people. They will only care how much it will cost them and how convenient and fast the service is. A $100 international CC transaction will always have the same fees. With Bitcoin, those fees will depend on the address types, inputs/outputs, used sat/vbyte fee range. A $100 bitcoin transaction can cost $0.06 one time, $0.20 the other time, and $10 the third time. When the average spender sees this, especially those with not so deep pockets, he won't care about privacy and third parties.   

Faster confirmations require more fees = more expensive transactions.

Bitcoin transaction is fast but not as fast as mastercard payments I guess, if you want a faster transaction response on bitcoin blockchain you need to have more fees available, the higher the gas fee the faster the transaction speed, If you aren't satisfied then other altcoins are the only option left, they have faster transaction speed e.g XRP, BCH and other

Most of the in person ones do for cash payments, yeah. But these are largely all small independent or family run businesses. I imagine such behavior would be much rare ewith large corporations. Obviously the online ones don't accept cash payments.

Absolutely. But I'm certainly not going to turn it down. :P I suppose if they would have used some of the fiat to deposit on an exchange, pay fees to buy bitcoin, and pay fees to withdraw it (on top of credit card fees), then 10% isn't quite so crazy.

The reason most altcoins are faster are generally down to two things. Firstly, nobody uses them, so their mempools are empty. Secondly, they are incredibly insecure. Most altcoins have been successfully 51% attacked. It takes days or weeks and hundreds or thousands of confirmations for the same security bitcoin reaches in under an hour.

The answer is really simple mate..because visa/mastercards are all centralized while bitcoin is decentralized I hope you already know what it means centralized transactions did not pass through called blockchains or ledger its totally instant but vulnerable to attack but bitcoin transactions mined by miners before completing transactions in a very secured system called blockchain.   

Would you be able to send cash worldwide without settling charges and profoundly expense with MasterCard?, obviously NO.
Just bitcoin has the capacity to settle cash without taxes and different charges.
You should look at a few favorable circumstances as well it's better to wait for a moment than paying extra taxes to the government.
Bitcoin transactions are instant but the fact is they're slow to confirm it.
In case you're in rush you can go with the Credit card yet its better to utilize bitcoin and hang tight for conformation