BitWillet: To help merchants accept Bitcoin

[singpolyma]

Another (much cleaner looker) merchant system for BitCoin

Full disclosure: the author is a friend of mine.  To use the service as a merchant you need a Google account.  I believe the system only works for customers who have JavaScript enabled.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/ibfxf/my_weekend_project_accept_bitcoin_on_your_website/
http://bitwillet.com/

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[Swishercutter]

Another (much cleaner looker) merchant system for BitCoin

Full disclosure: the author is a friend of mine.  To use the service as a merchant you need a Google account.  I believe the system only works for customers who have JavaScript enabled.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/ibfxf/my_weekend_project_accept_bitcoin_on_your_website/
http://bitwillet.com/

I just saw this on Hacker News.  I have a site going live shortly and this is exactly what I needed...anyone know if it is safe or if there is a better alternative.

[nhodges]

Another (much cleaner looker) merchant system for BitCoin

Full disclosure: the author is a friend of mine.  To use the service as a merchant you need a Google account.  I believe the system only works for customers who have JavaScript enabled.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/ibfxf/my_weekend_project_accept_bitcoin_on_your_website/
http://bitwillet.com/

I just saw this on Hacker News.  I have a site going live shortly and this is exactly what I needed...anyone know if it is safe or if there is a better alternative.

Haven't gotten a chance to test BitWillet out, but MyBitcoin has a secure shopping cart interface that is heavily adopted already.

[Gabriel Beal]

One problem is that if you charge 3% (at some point in the future, like your site says), that reduces the advantage of using bitcoin in a major way.

[stic.man]

yeah what does visa charge?  around 3% right?  defeats a lot of the purpose

[foggyb]

Fees..... so tedious.

On the other hard, Paypal makes a living out of it.

[singpolyma]

My friend hasn't got out of n00b status on the forum yet   He said to post this:

the fee is there to cover our expenses, and hopefully turn a small profit. Unlike Visa/MasterCard/etc, there is nothing forcing merchants to choose us — they are free to host their own Bitcoin daemon and monitor its transactions. But if they don't want to do that (because they aren't technically savvy, they want to get a proof-of-concept out quickly, etc), they have the option of using our service… And once they have used our service, there is nothing at all forcing them to stay with us.

[TECSHARE]

I don't see a problem with a fee if it is a centralized service. They reduce the work time and liability for the merchants which are already taking considerable risk accepting Bitcoins because of volatility. If you don't like the fees I suggest you program your own free open source version

[Gabriel Beal]

It's not that I don't feel like developers should be rewarded for their efforts.  I'm just saying that monetizing it in this particular way removes a lot of the incentive for merchants to make the jump to accepting bitcoins.  Yes, once Bitcoin becomes established, merchants might want to make the jump because a large portion of the population might have bitcoins to spend.  But right now, if I'm a merchant weighing bitcoin without the advantage of 0% fees, I think I'm less likely to make a move.

However, bitcoin does have other advantages, so maybe I'm overvaluing the fees thing.

[TECSHARE]

I completely agree with your sentiment - but reality unfortunately isn't quite as simple. Anything Bitcoin related is a high value target for hacking, especially lately. As some one considering selling goods in exchange for Bitcoins, this is probably the factor that makes me most uneasy even beyond the volatility issues. Having a well secured transaction hub run by professionals that know how to keep it secure in my opinion is worth some small fees. I know enough about technology to know that there will always be some one that knows enough to break my system. A small group of dedicated (read paid) experts in my opinion is the only way to do provide any reasonable assurance at this juncture. Short of manually processing each transaction, I wouldn't want to sell anything of higher value using an automated Bitcoin payment system otherwise.

[cunicula]

A more expensive service that took on bitcoin risk might be worthwhile. For example, say the service receives the bitcoin + a 5% fee, and then sends
the merchant Dwolla at the current Mt. Gox rate. If you consider both chargeback risk and VISA/MC fees, this might be a good option for some merchants

[wolever]

It's not that I don't feel like developers should be rewarded for their efforts.  I'm just saying that monetizing it in this particular way removes a lot of the incentive for merchants to make the jump to accepting bitcoins.

Do you have an idea for a better method? Or are you advocating being free/pay-what-you-want for now, then switching to fees later?

However, bitcoin does have other advantages, so maybe I'm overvaluing the fees thing.

My personal feeling is that the bigger problem with other online payment systems (eg, PayPal) is the amount of trust (eg, that they won't freeze your account) and work (red tape, integration, etc) they require… And Bitcoin certainly solves both those problems. Also, I guess just don't think small fees are a practical issue for purveyors of digital goods, as their marginal cost is close to zero.

(I'm one of the BitWillet developers, by the way — just got my account un-noob'd)

[RevolutionMaster]

Personally, I feel that only the top 10% of merchants should have fees attached to them, and even with that, make them 1.5%.

[wolever]

Personally, I feel that only the top 10% of merchants should have fees attached to them, and even with that, make them 1.5%.

That's a good idea. I'll definitely consider it once we start charging.

[cripperz]

interesting. I should look into this.

[Yurock]

Demo didn't work for me. I sent bitcoins and got nothing in return. The site says:

Waiting for confirmations.
This may take up to 5 minutes.
Please do not close this dialog.

I think, more than 30 minutes passed already, and the transaction now has 10 confirmations, and I still see that message and spinning thingy. That would earn customer dissatisfaction.  

[RevolutionMaster]

Feature request here: Would it be possible to allow merchants to keep a balance on BitWillit, similar to MyBitcoin? That'd make you a very viable competitor.

At the moment, if I wanted to use BitWillit over the RPC or MyBitcoin APIs, I'd have to implement a secondary system for the sending of bitcoins.

[wolever]

Demo didn't work for me. I sent bitcoins and got nothing in return. The site says:

Waiting for confirmations.
This may take up to 5 minutes.
Please do not close this dialog.

I think, more than 30 minutes passed already, and the transaction now has 10 confirmations, and I still see that message and spinning thingy. That would earn customer dissatisfaction.  

Ya, one of the difficulties is that smaller transactions can take quite a while to propagate throughout the network, so it can take a while. Apart from showing the number of confirmations in the “waiting” dialog, and possibly including a link to the BlockExplorer record for the transaction, I'm not sure what can be done to improve that =\

[wolever]

Feature request here: Would it be possible to allow merchants to keep a balance on BitWillit, similar to MyBitcoin? That'd make you a very viable competitor.

At the moment, if I wanted to use BitWillit over the RPC or MyBitcoin APIs, I'd have to implement a secondary system for the sending of bitcoins.

You mean, so that your site can automatically send Bitcoins as well as receive them? Can you give me an example of how you would use that?

[RevolutionMaster]

In something like BiddingPond, that system could make sense, given that it allows for an automated intermediary to escrow the auction, and I'm sure the people over in gambling would go for it. Currency exchanges could theoretically integrate it, although they probably use RPC.