Why there is still no credit card which you can use your BTC?

[gannicus]

1. Charge your card with Bitcoins
2. Go to the supermarket, spend 50 USD
3. Insert your card, type your pass,you are charged in USD and your bitcoins are sold at that moment at an amount enough to pay 50 USD. The card company may pay your 50 USD, and then sell BTC to pay your 50 USD debt with them, or if their system is good enough, your BTC is sold in a few seconds and the USD given to the store.

Advantages:

-You can use your bitcoins to buy stuff regardless if the buyer accepts it or not.
-Mostly the same of having and using BTC at all: Decentralized, limited supply, you don't need a bank to storage them, (arguable) anonimity, etc
 
Disavantages:

You tell me in the thread

[AliceWonder]

I check my balance.
$60

I go to store. Bitcoin fluctuates and now it is worth $48

I buy $50 worth of merchandise.

Card declined.

That's the danger. You'd have to have some kind of fiat overdraft and that's the problem.

I do see a potential for prepaid credit card where I can add USD from home before I leave.

[bitcoinator]

I check my balance.
$60

I go to store. Bitcoin fluctuates and now it is worth $48

I buy $50 worth of merchandise.

Card declined.

That's the danger. You'd have to have some kind of fiat overdraft and that's the problem.

I do see a potential for prepaid credit card where I can add USD from home before I leave.

I don't think it is a big problem. Just have some btc in reserve. When you go to Europe with your USD card, you can't be sure how many euros you can spend either.

[someguy123]

I check my balance.
$60

I go to store. Bitcoin fluctuates and now it is worth $48

I buy $50 worth of merchandise.

Card declined.

That's the danger. You'd have to have some kind of fiat overdraft and that's the problem.

I do see a potential for prepaid credit card where I can add USD from home before I leave.

^^^
This

It's not exactly reliable to trust a card which sells bitcoins on the fly, at least not until the Bitcoin price stabilizes. A card which could keep some sort-of reserve in dollars/pounds/whatever else would be okay though, such as having $100 reserve, then 2 BTC in the actual wallet. Then if you go over the reserve, it automatically sells BTC at market price to pay for the product.

[gannicus]

^^^
This

It's not exactly reliable to trust a card which sells bitcoins on the fly, at least not until the Bitcoin price stabilizes. A card which could keep some sort-of reserve in dollars/pounds/whatever else would be okay though, such as having $100 reserve, then 2 BTC in the actual wallet. Then if you go over the reserve, it automatically sells BTC at market price to pay for the product.

Well this problem can be solved with a multi-currency card. One of the possibilities would be BTC, just like USD, EUR, AUD, CAD, CHF, etc. You use the one that fits you best. If you want to do your savings in EUR, but your country does not accept it, fine, you use the card and the EUR is sold and converted to local currency. Same goes of course with BTC. The buyer will receive what he wants, you give what you want, and the best currency will win the market. If BTC is devaluated you simply use other currency (fully or partially - and since Mt. Gox negotiates BTC with many currencies this can be easily done through BTC), problem solved.

[ab8989]

The exchange or bank or whatever it is called that handles the BTC needs to be trusted by Mastercard or Visa with solid proof so that they know for absolute certainty that they are going to get their money wired from the BTC exchange company on the very same day when they want their money and not perhaps in a couple of weeks.

I guess this card business was viewed by both MtGox and BitInstant in the distant past when they were some of the more reliable BTC companies. In the light of current events on these companies do you think Visa or Mastercard would have been happy with their performance? What absolutely solid proof there exists to show that the currently more reliable BTC companies wont turn into MtGox or BitInstant just next year?

[adamas]

New project: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/paysey-the-bitcoin-card

[BitTrade]

New project: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/paysey-the-bitcoin-card

You're joking, right? 

From the indiegogo page:

The main things we'll need:

Hardware: We'll like to buy some new hardware, for our team members.
Domains: We'll like to renewal the domain Paysey.com for the next 5-10 years.
Servers & Hosting: We'll like to purchase/rent hosting and servers, for Paysey.com.
Fees and Set Up Cost: We're sure that we'll come along some Fees and Set Up cost that we'll have to pay first.

 

[BitTrade]

There are 3 answers to this question, all of which, not surprisingly, have to do with the state:  FinCEN, KYC (know your customer), AML (anti money laundering).  

Volaitlity is not the issue.  The issue is compliance with US regulations.  Even overseas companies need to comply, as one european company offering bitcoin-backed debit cards found out recently.

Here's all that's left of "e card one", a company who had barley even begun to roll out their bitcoin-backed debit card before being seized:  http://ecardone.com/index.html

[RodeoX]

The stumbling blocks in creating such a card are not technical, they are legal.

[tclo]

Biggest drawback is that VISA/MC takes a fraction of as second for the transaction to be completed and Bitcoin takes an hour or longer sometimes.  Even waiting for one confirmation can take forever, it seems.

[gannicus]

Biggest drawback is that VISA/MC takes a fraction of as second for the transaction to be completed and Bitcoin takes an hour or longer sometimes.  Even waiting for one confirmation can take forever, it seems.

Like I said, the company may pay the seller in USD (in a fraction of second), and then sell your BTC for USD to recover this amount of USD. Just put a fee that cover the time and the risk for such transaction, and it is done. About the exchange instability problem for Mt. Gox and others, the company itself could act as an exchange buying and selling BTC with proper spread and fees (e.g. the company buys your BTC for X USD the moment you spend 1.001X USD in BTC).

[adamas]

The main things we'll need:

Hardware: We'll like to buy some new hardware, for our team members.
Domains: We'll like to renewal the domain Paysey.com for the next 5-10 years.
Servers & Hosting: We'll like to purchase/rent hosting and servers, for Paysey.com.
Fees and Set Up Cost: We're sure that we'll come along some Fees and Set Up cost that we'll have to pay first.
 

  Well, as it's not my project, it's not my business either   

[jbreher]

There are 3 answers to this question, all of which, not surprisingly, have to do with the state:  FinCEN, KYC (know your customer), AML (anti money laundering).  

Volaitlity is not the issue.  The issue is compliance with US regulations.  Even overseas companies need to comply, as one european company offering bitcoin-backed debit cards found out recently.

Here's all that's left of "e card one", a company who had barley even begun to roll out their bitcoin-backed debit card before being seized:  http://ecardone.com/index.html

Not quite - here's what's left of eCardOne: http://dagensia.eu/ . Some US governmental organization seized their domain. But their formal name is Dagensia Finance. So they moved their web operations to another domain they already controlled, outside the jurisdiction [sic] of the US.

That said, they did shut down their offering for all US citizens. Pity - I had one of their MasterCard branded debit cards for all of three days before they decided the AML/KYC/FinCEN exposure was not worth the risk.

BTW, what OP describes is _not_ a credit card - it is more properly a debit card - much like eCardOne.

For precision's sake, the conversion by Dagensia from BTC to Fiat is not done at the consumer's point of purchase. It is done at time of 'loading' the card. I did not have an active card long enough to gauge conversion time.

Edit: reword last paragraph for clarity.

[Coinseeker]

The Ripple network is the only one close to making this a reality.  Speed and compliance are the keys to success.  Bitcoin, on it's own, doesn't stand a chance in this arena.  With Ripple, in theory, a debit card could deduct from any currency in your wallet and do it in seconds, with the network automatically finding the best paths for your currencies.

Other than this, I don't see any other realistic way to pull this off. 

[surebet]

So the Paysey campain has a 25k$ funding goal, but a 14.5k$ perk cap. Awesome.

[bernard75]

Meanwhile you can try the cards in my signature.