Why don't ICO's use Coinbase or similar services for payments?

[Patatas]

Can one of you tech savvy guys tell me why ICO's don't use services like Coinbase to accept funds for their ICO's?

Because coinbase doesn't allow it ?

I see in my account where I could add a shopping cart to my website to take payments in many different coins (the same way I would add a Paypal cart) and that takes about 5 minutes.  Why don't these guys just use one of these services and they could accept just about any coin?

You do know right coinbase is an centralised exchange ? They wouldn't consider ICO's as a legal way of (taxed) income.Moreover,why would an ICO trust coinbase with their funds ? What if the website goes down tomorrow ?

[SurfnTurf]

Hello SurfnTurf! The issue is that Coinbase is designed for retail investors, convenience and ease of use. Coinbase holds the private keys of the tokens on their site rather than the investor. As Coinbase is currently set up investors may not receive ERC-20 tokens that are issued in ICOs.

In fact many ICOs will have a strong disclaimer not to send in funds for an ICO from Coinbase otherwise there is risk of capital loss. As a best practice professional investors should control the private keys of their ETH and BTC holdings. Ownership of the private keys gives an investor maximum flexibility in the event of blockchain forks or other events which may affect the value of the crypto currency.

For Ethereum, I can recommend the www.myetherwallet.com wallet if an investor wishes to transact in ICOs. Promoters of ICOs are well aware of Coinbase's limitations and for this reason will shy away from using Coinbase in their ICOs either for distribution or receipt of funds.  

That helps.  I kept seeing that disclaimer you mention which is why I was wondering in the first place.  Thanks.

[cenicsoft]

Once BannerCoin launches - ICO information here - BannerCoin.com companies will be able to use a payment acceptance app to accept payments for multiple types of digital currencies. The main difference between using a service like Coinbase's and what BannerCoin is proposing is that the end merchant (or ICO organization in this case) would have full control over where the funds are sent.

With that control, they could then use any exchange to convert the crypto into fiat to use for funding development. in addition, they can gather customer information, store it easily and reference it when it's time to actually distribute the ICO coins. All Coinbase and many other payment systems offer is a simple checkout button. There's no direct tie in with all the post order processing that goes into running a successful ecommerce website. Whether it's accepting funds for ICOs or tracking who ordered what from an online store, a simple payment button does little other than take a payment. It's what happens after the payment is accepted that makes the difference.