1) getting hold of bitcoins anonymously is indeed like something out of the bourne supremecy and takes major hassle and headaches in the UK at least....buying ukash codes, then trying to convert to USD to use on cashu to finally get to mtgox....or using other online guys taking a whopping 20% !!...as for using paypal or CC....forget it !!!
If you are in London, you needn't pay more than 5% for anonymous, cash purchases:
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https://localbitcoins.com/postal_code/uk/londongreat info thanks, few miles away, but do travel so will take a look
the everyday online customers will not use or go near bitcoin until it is majorly simplified and user friendly....
In the U.S., Coinbase has an approach that seems to work well. The cost is relatively trivial (1% above spot when buying bitcoins, 1% below when selling bitcoins). Of course, this is not anonymous. There's no such thing as using the bank system for its convenience and not putting up with the hassles that AML/KYC require.
quite....has no one had any luck utilising any offshore structures to get around US/EU banking ?....
3) pricing......another trickty area as any payment systems needs to be linked or some poor sod merchent will be forever having to change his/her prices to reflect the unstable nature of bitcoin values
With most e-commerce / shopping cart software solutions, including payment processing like is offered from BitPay allows the merchant to set the price in USDs (or some other other currency) and the price shown to the customer is computed dynamically based on the current exchange rate.
yes, my error, just seen that today, thanks
3) Also there does need to be some movement towards buyer protection too. Everyone sparks on about the benefit to sellers as no chargebacks etc are possible....yet we forget, you will never make this payment successful without offering buyer protection.
Cash also is non-reversible and doesn't enable chargebacks. Not sure how customers still patronize these cash-only businesses :-)
agreed, however, I think its safe to say that very few online retailers accept cash. It's Debit card, credit card or paypal, pre paid card. Most of which offer (however nightmarish for merchants), some kind of buyer protection. Quite agree nearly all is entirely buyer bias, poorly conceived and a danger for the seller. I just hold the point that, if BTC wishes to be successful, we need to find some way offer this protection both ways....we all know both buyers and sellers can be untrustworthy.
But, if you want to succeed online...the customer is ALWAYS right....we need to be offering them, processes, services they are comforable using that benefit both parties.
Some kind of escrow and slowly introducing buyers to this and how it works could be good.
