Bitcoin Forum

I was trying to buy something on the web the other day and they didn't use BTC,

At the same time I was buying another service using BTC on another site.

The difference cannot be overstated. BTC went almost instantly (they used bitpay) and service on in seconds, in fact before I even had time to shut the window.

I had to do a double take and check the addresses, to maker sure....it was so fast. I *think* this is because Bitpay accept zero confirms.

Any how using the credit card, waited ages for the transaction, then the provider got antsy about back charges as I was using a vpn to make the payment, later at a critical time they suspended service because they were still worried about back charges. I eventually gave up on the service. I mentioned they should be using BTC.

It hit home to me how the business that does not have to fear charge backs fraud etc, has a huge overhead risk removed and how much faster BTC can be.

Its hard to see how BTC won't take over all internet business transactions.

I know I am preaching to the converted, but still.....you could not do this just a few years ago

No charge back for merchants. But customers fear it is difficult to claim refund back when problems arise. They need time to accept the advantage rather than to focus on the drawback of BTC.

No charge-back risk and small tx fees are huge advantage from the seller's point of view. But they should share the benefits with the buyers by offering discounts for bitcoin payments. They still would pay less fees (comparing to cc payments) and buyers are happy to save some money. Everybody wins.

Both have their pros and cons and both rely on the speed of the payment processor. Obviously I'm a big fan and promoter of BTC but I've never really had any issues with the speed of credit or debit cards.

For the same reasons of it is above of paypal ;) . No chargeback , low fees , no freeze account , anonymity .

As others have said, no charge back risk, small fees, also, one thing people haven't mentioned when talking about Bitcoin very much is that people will not be able to lend more than they have or borrow more than they have, the supply is better fixed than gold because it is on a global network so if somebody random is claiming they have millions of coins you'll know they're lying, exchanges have actually been caught already lying about their trade volume and it's thanks to these systems people were able to spot it almost immediately.

I believe one example I saw was some Chinese exchange startup that was claiming it has thousands of Bitcoin in volume even though it had only been up a few days.

True, the buyers' fears of no charge back options may slow down the adoption. No idea whether Bitpay have any sort of protection from scam sellers.
On the end of the day, you can still take a legal actions against fraudulent sellers, so it's not like you're completely defenceless (as long as you make sure you're buying from registered, non-anonymous business).
If there's ever a big demand for increased buyer protection, you can always get a 3rd party, trusted company providing payment processing and dispute resolution (buyer protection), it's pretty easy to do.

Whilst I agree the inability to make a fraudulent chargeback is great for Merchants there could be problems with getting your money back if there's ever a problem with your purchase. Paypal and cards may have many problems but if you don't recieve your item or your account it stolen you're usually covered.

Yes you are right only good thing with BTC is that have fixed fee rate witch is good for large amount of transaction.

Ass mentioned above everything have his good and bad sides.

Payment once sent would be final on every payment network if there weren't frauds and identity theft around online world.Transactions would be more secure and easy and people would be more worry free.

I prefer credit card because if it disappears someday then I can make an appeal. 8) 8)

Sooner or later consumer protection will be in place with Bitcoin.  This is just enough repeat of online shopping

Yes, and with BTC the consumer will have the choice of whether to opt-in or not for this protection. Many times I don't want this protection yet my CC company tries to "protect" me from paying merchants that they think are suspicious.

"For my protection" - my ass!

EDIT: I've also had problems with CC and paying large amounts. Last year when I tried to pay for Bitfury rigs (@ $19.8K each) Chase kept canceling my transaction because they thought that this was highly unusual. This was even after I called their security department. I eventually ended up paying with another bank's CC, but my order was delayed because of this..

With bitcoins you can transfer millions of dollars with a very small transaction fee without paying the banks.

Charge back has its purpose.

How comfortable would you be paying with BTC to a novice seller? I wouldn't.

So from that POV BTC payments might kill novice/small sellers unless you could somehow implement buyers protection.

That's already happening in sites like Newegg. If stores want to encourage people to use Bitcoins, they have to give them a good reason.

NewEgg promo is really helpful to spread the word about bitcoins, hope some other big companies will follow them.

The only thing where Bitcoin is vastly superior to Credit Cards is when it comes to the fact that only you control where your BTC go, people can't simply charge your Bitcoin address with something. The mere concept of Credit Cards is different to Bitcoin itself. Bitcoin effectively is the underlying currency. Credit Cards provide a specific service to their users above the currency level.

CC is used everywhere and BTC isn't. If you use debit card then company also gives you bonus points which you can redeem later :)

Yeah, and they build a profile of you and your expenses. People don't care, at that's exactly the reason why this advantage of Bitcoin doesn't do the trick for most people, still it is sad. But don't forget that there still are people who are concerned about their privacy and actively work on protecting it.

CC are more popular, that's for sure. But, unlike bitcoin, they restrict the ability to transfer 'your own' funds. And anyone in the world with the internet access can use bitcoin, while most of the world population still have no access to the banking services.


Awesome!!! So they give you free money to reward you for spending money? Where do you think those free money come from?

All that CC has on BTC is mass adoption, the rest is inferior.

The reason people still prefer credit card is because it protect consumer from fraud, broken product and come with insurance when travelling.

Bitcoin doesn't come with this kind of service and customers are pretty much on their own.

I won't call bct is superior to credit card.

Note that banks/cc companies are services build on fiat currency, we should be really comparing btc to fiat. The fact is, the 'bare' bitcoin can do most of what the banks/cc can do, with some advantages and disadvantages (no charge backs). But there's absolutely no reason why any additional service can't be build on top of the basic blockchain transactions.

Today's news of Home Depot's potentially massive leak of credit/debit card information (looks to be bigger than Target) is another reason why BTC is superior.... ;D

Confirmations are an issue, but it is very clear that bitcoin is infinitely better than a bank account. Anybody who thinks that is secure is not paying attention. It is only insured because of our domineering global policy at least in the US.

Why are confirmations an issue? Bitpay does fine taking zero confirmations. My frustration is when vendors/exchanges require confirmations at all -- then it can be frustrating when your transaction is the one that waits 1 hour for a single confirmation! ;D

Bitcoin is credit card 2.0, when all the people will know about it no one will use the cards.

BTC is merely the currency. Credit Cards are a service offered by the Credit Card companies! Credit Cards could also use BTC, just like they're using USD, Euros, whatever already now! Credit Cards are being used in order to facilitate paying for things and they protect customers from being scammed.

security. Even CC uses those stupid numbers along with exp date, secret code, phone number, zipcode, yet still not secure and is the major cause for charging back

If you are buying for a large merchant with "reputation" then they would likely be willing to work with you to try to resolve any issues before it would come to needing/wanting to pursue a chargeback. IMO the majority of the chargebacks to large merchants are somehow fraudulent (either a stolen card was used, or the cardholder is lying about something). If the merchant does not work something out then their reputation would be at risk. 

It seems to me that, regardless of the concerns consumers may have about refunds, merchants stand to gain a LOT from favoring BTC over fiat/credit cards. At this point they are just testing the waters by starting to accept BTC, but at some point I expect the lights to come on. They are going to realize, hey, this BTC payments thing works.

Someone is going to do a presentation comparing their BTC transactions Year-to-Date with fiat payments, and a bunch of executives sitting in a board room are going to see... zero bounced checks. Zero chargebacks. Zero counterfeit notes. Immediate payment, not after 3 or 30 or 90 days. No credit card fees or banking fees or handling fees or armored car deliveries for cash, and so on. And they are going to look at the charts and graphs for the cost of doing business with fiat, and it's going to hit them that BTC really is better, and they WANT their customers to be using BTC when doing business with them due to the cost savings.

So this is what I'm waiting for and fully expecting sometime soon: Not just a new business announcement saying they are accepting Bitcoin, but an announcement from a business that customers paying with Bitcoin will enjoy a permanent 5% (or similar) discount compared to other forms of payment. Enough that it will trump most every advantage to using fiat currency (such as credit card rewards programs), and send customers scurrying to google to see how they can buy this Bitcoin thingie to take advantage.

Once this happens, and other businesses follow suit -we could be in for another round of skyrocketing demand for BTC. Anyone see a serious flaw in my logic?

If the BTC price kept going up then there wouldn't be a use for credit cards.

I really don't think either is superior to the other at this point.   Both BTC and credit cards can be useful in different instances.   There are some purchases that I wouldn't make with BTC  (i.e. something that has a high probability of being returned).

For instance, I was buying knobs and handles for my kitchen cabinets from Restoration Hardware the other day.   I couldn't tell which ones would look the best, so I ended up buying one of each of a bunch of them (with the intention on returning most of them), and then ordering multiples of the one I liked best.

It made much more sense to make this purchase on a Restoration Hardware Credit Card.  In addition, I get 5% cash back towards any future purchases there.


On the other hand, sometimes BTC is much better, especially when the merchant doesn't even accept credit card (like Trezor).


Both have benefits, so I don't think either is superior.... yet.

BTC will be standard in few year so i wont make so much noise about it.

Use the force kid.

This is already in process only is mater "when".

Credit/debit cards and ATMs future is in crypto.