How are purchases done so fast?

[ajalele]

It has been my experience that bitcoin transactions take anywhere from ten minutes to a few hours to confirm. How is it that when I buy something using bitcoin the system seems to accept my payment immediately?  Is the system just seeing the unconfirmed transaction and calling it good or do these payment systems have some way of instantly confirming the transactions?

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[mattermaster]

When you buy something using bitcoin, the system puts it in the pending transactions until it gets a minimum one confirmation.
The bitcoin network considers a transaction confirmed as soon as it takes atleast three confirmations.

[findingthemoon]

For low value transactions it is very rare someone will attempt a double spend to earn a very small amount. Also if you are buying drinks in a bar with bitcoin you will be around long enough for them to confirm the transaction, if you are buying an online subscription service they can cancel the subscription if you double spend.

There are several services that are well suited for instant confirmation, and there are others where the value is low enough they take the risk since few people will want to cheat for little money.

[GMPoison]

It has been my experience that bitcoin transactions take anywhere from ten minutes to a few hours to confirm. How is it that when I buy something using bitcoin the system seems to accept my payment immediately?  Is the system just seeing the unconfirmed transaction and calling it good or do these payment systems have some way of instantly confirming the transactions?

You don't need to stand around and wait for the bitcoins to confirm. Once it's in your wallet, it's yours. We're not talking about credit cards or debit cards or checks here, we're talking about bitcoin. It's instant, and it's non-refundable.

Biggest non-argument people use when criticizing bitcoin for not being able to be used as currency.

[BlackMambaPH]

I think it's defend of the high transaction fee that's why it will take confirmation immediately.
And as far as I know the higher the fee the fastest way to get transaction confirm.

It will be risky to the received if they will instantly credited your deposit. Maybe, They will credit your deposit if the transaction atleast get one confirmation.

[Sadlife]

There are also some intances that you send the payment in low unconfirmed transactions
There are times that in some days thousands of unconfirmed transactions is pending into the bitcoin network so that's why there are some delays but if only there is few unconfirmed transactions it will get confirmed faster.

[szafa]

Didnt know about something like this service.

[BlackPanda]

It has been my experience that bitcoin transactions take anywhere from ten minutes to a few hours to confirm. How is it that when I buy something using bitcoin the system seems to accept my payment immediately?  Is the system just seeing the unconfirmed transaction and calling it good or do these payment systems have some way of instantly confirming the transactions?

This is the problem of all of us. The delay in sending bitcoin becomes a serious problem. This is due to the increasing number of transactions conducted every time. One way to overcome this is to enlarge the fee that we provide. With it then we can speed up the transaction process. This is indeed an obstacle, but spending more money in every transaction is the best option right now.

[posternat]

It has been my experience that bitcoin transactions take anywhere from ten minutes to a few hours to confirm. How is it that when I buy something using bitcoin the system seems to accept my payment immediately?  Is the system just seeing the unconfirmed transaction and calling it good or do these payment systems have some way of instantly confirming the transactions?

You want to have fast transaction, I guess the only solution there is to pay high transaction fee every time you make one, because we are having big volume of users now, it prioritize those who have high fee. Also as the bitcoin price is increasing the fee is also increasing and these days you may have to pay 1$ as a Tx fee for the transactions.

[Zicadis]

It has been my experience that bitcoin transactions take anywhere from ten minutes to a few hours to confirm.

Depending on the fee you have set that is the time frame we all expect a confirmation and if you set an even lower one expect it to take several hours to days or get dropped and forgotten.

How is it that when I buy something using bitcoin the system seems to accept my payment immediately?  Is the system just seeing the unconfirmed transaction and calling it good or do these payment systems have some way of instantly confirming the transactions?

By system are you referring to a merchant in this context because i use some mobile topup services that do not usually wait for the 1 confirmation which has become the norm to avoid double spends or tx that will never confirm....i guess it comes down to the preference of the merchant.

[AngelSky]

It has been my experience that bitcoin transactions take anywhere from ten minutes to a few hours to confirm. How is it that when I buy something using bitcoin the system seems to accept my payment immediately?  Is the system just seeing the unconfirmed transaction and calling it good or do these payment systems have some way of instantly confirming the transactions?

You want to have fast transaction, I guess the only solution there is to pay high transaction fee every time you make one, because we are having big volume of users now, it prioritize those who have high fee. Also as the bitcoin price is increasing the fee is also increasing and these days you may have to pay 1$ as a Tx fee for the transactions.

It's easy way to make the transaction to get confirmations soon. You can find the default minimum set value in wallets like Coinbase or Blockchain.info 0.00043 btc for a transaction which is 0.81$. This amount will give a confirmation for your transactions 40 minutes or sometimes due to network delay due to mining process, therefore, it take half a day or more as well.

[aTriz]

It has been my experience that bitcoin transactions take anywhere from ten minutes to a few hours to confirm. How is it that when I buy something using bitcoin the system seems to accept my payment immediately?  Is the system just seeing the unconfirmed transaction and calling it good or do these payment systems have some way of instantly confirming the transactions?

Well, basically there are some services that allow something like instant confirmation. It is in such a situation, when you pay them for some special good, that gives them an ability to retrieve their money in case of double-spend: that is why there are 0 confirmations needed in some cases.
But usually, you need at least one confirmation to go through the blockchain, before you will get the thing you have payed for. It is because that in many scenarios everything is fine after one confirmation, but still the companies have some solutions for "emergency" where something will go wrong.

But dont expect instant confirmations when you pay for something you want to ship, because the seller needs to be sure that he has got payed.

[piloder]

It has been my experience that bitcoin transactions take anywhere from ten minutes to a few hours to confirm. How is it that when I buy something using bitcoin the system seems to accept my payment immediately?  Is the system just seeing the unconfirmed transaction and calling it good or do these payment systems have some way of instantly confirming the transactions?

If any service that accept bitcoin payments with just 0 confirmation than they are vulnerable to double spend attack and they may actually loss so much due to that.

But many services just wait for atleast one confirmation these days to remain in safe side. They will just notify that they have received some bitcoin and it is still unconfirmed and ask their users to wait  till it get few confirmation to be able to use it. There is one wallet bitgo made for instant transaction but transactions they have are just offchain transactions.

[Kevin77]

It has been my experience that bitcoin transactions take anywhere from ten minutes to a few hours to confirm. How is it that when I buy something using bitcoin the system seems to accept my payment immediately?  Is the system just seeing the unconfirmed transaction and calling it good or do these payment systems have some way of instantly confirming the transactions?

If any service that accept bitcoin payments with just 0 confirmation than they are vulnerable to double spend attack and they may actually loss so much due to that.

But many services just wait for atleast one confirmation these days to remain in safe side. They will just notify that they have received some bitcoin and it is still unconfirmed and ask their users to wait  till it get few confirmation to be able to use it. There is one wallet bitgo made for instant transaction but transactions they have are just offchain transactions.

There are many enhancement projects like lightning network are being developed to overcome these types of hurdles and as of now off-chain based services are able to provide instant acceptances.

When I tried with xapo to tip in xotica, my transactions were instant as xotica is also using xapo based wallet services. Coinbase to coinbase transactions could get approved instantly. Other than this, to overcome the delay of confirmation, people prefer using bitcoin based debit cards. Once loaded with bitcoins, people are finding more merchant choices along with zero waiting time for payment approval.

[Baofeng]

It has been my experience that bitcoin transactions take anywhere from ten minutes to a few hours to confirm. How is it that when I buy something using bitcoin the system seems to accept my payment immediately?  Is the system just seeing the unconfirmed transaction and calling it good or do these payment systems have some way of instantly confirming the transactions?

You want to have fast transaction, I guess the only solution there is to pay high transaction fee every time you make one, because we are having big volume of users now, it prioritize those who have high fee. Also as the bitcoin price is increasing the fee is also increasing and these days you may have to pay 1$ as a Tx fee for the transactions.

Yeah. Just pay higher transaction fee and your transaction can be confirmed in the next block. You just have to wait like a few minutes before intended receiver get their bitcoin. I don't know why people are still complaining. Wallet like Electrum can help you adjust the transaction fee or just used the default setting.

[Drnice]

It has been my experience that bitcoin transactions take anywhere from ten minutes to a few hours to confirm. How is it that when I buy something using bitcoin the system seems to accept my payment immediately?  Is the system just seeing the unconfirmed transaction and calling it good or do these payment systems have some way of instantly confirming the transactions?

It is an issue truly, I had a similar issue with a transaction that was to be sent to my bitcoin address for over 2,3-4 days before it was confirmed, and after the confirmation there was a reduction from the amount sent to me.

But when I used bitrefill it was confirmed immediately.

[bohr]

It has been my experience that bitcoin transactions take anywhere from ten minutes to a few hours to confirm. How is it that when I buy something using bitcoin the system seems to accept my payment immediately?  Is the system just seeing the unconfirmed transaction and calling it good or do these payment systems have some way of instantly confirming the transactions?

Some services seems to accept the payment even before the confirmation takes place I suppose they have a way to detect if you try to double spend or something like that.

[Doell]

my experience, buy a pulse using bitcoin *Fast process. Bitcoin enter 0 confirm and taraa incoming pulse

[mrcash02]

It has been my experience that bitcoin transactions take anywhere from ten minutes to a few hours to confirm. How is it that when I buy something using bitcoin the system seems to accept my payment immediately?  Is the system just seeing the unconfirmed transaction and calling it good or do these payment systems have some way of instantly confirming the transactions?

It is an issue truly, I had a similar issue with a transaction that was to be sent to my bitcoin address for over 2,3-4 days before it was confirmed, and after the confirmation there was a reduction from the amount sent to me.

But when I used bitrefill it was confirmed immediately.

A reduction? It looks strange... I never heared about an issue about it. Do you know why this happened?

This delay transactions take to complete make inviable to have a daily life service accepting BTC as payment method. You can't go to a restaurant and pay with BTCs... It can take too much time to confirm the transaction and you will spend a lot of time waiting for this. Some Bitcoin users already admit Bitcoin wasn't made to pay for coffee, meals and these kind of stuff... I would like it has a solution, so we could use BTC this way.

[ASHLIUSZ]

This can be felt with the gambling websites too, while you make a purchase or make a betting the confirmation is just the incoming transaction. Based on this the product purchase will be confirmed, but the delivery will be initiated once on confirmation of the transaction. Same is with gambling websites.

[deddod]

I think, After confirmation to enter in blockchain although still 0 confirmation, I think you do not have to wait long until confirmation is complete, because when transaction enters in blockchain then the transaction can not be canceled. 

[Noctis Connor]

When you buy something with bitcoin and the transction are being made or unconfirmed its done it just need a confirmation with the blockchain before it will be transfer successfully and after the confirmation it will be confirmed to the store that your transaction is done and fully paid. Your Transaction is Completed.