[ANN] Introducing Bit-pay Merchant Solutions

[Steve]

If you saw the post about STARE yesterday, you’ll see that we have a pretty serious merchant now accepting bitcoins side-by-side with Visa and Mastercard.  STARE is using the bit-pay merchant tools that we've created.  We believe bitcoin is a technological and social innovation that is rarely seen in human history and want to see bitcoin succeed.  We are excited to be a part of it and hope to contribute to its success.
 
Our goal at bit-pay is to enable online merchants to accept bitcoins just as easily as they accept payments from Paypal, Visa, or Mastercard.  That is a tall order given where the bitcoin technology is today, relative to the others, but we hope to be a major part of the innovation that moves bitcoin forward.
 
Tony at STARE had a lot of input into the design and layout of bit-pay, so it is designed from a merchants perspective.  We hope that helps us achieve our objective of making it easy for merchants.
 
One of the big benefits is that we allow merchants to set their prices, or their shopping cart total, in their local currency (USD, EUR, etc).  This can insulate the merchants from the volatile bitcoin exchange rates.  After the buyer pays with the appropriate amount of bitcoins, the merchant has a choice.  They can either accept the bitcoins, or have us convert this for them and pay them in USD.  There’s a little delay and additional fee for USD payouts, but we think that’s probably ok.
 
So actually, if a merchant sets their prices in US Dollars, and wants to receive US Dollars, the merchant doesn’t have to know anything about bitcoins at all.  It is invisible to them.  They get paid with bit-pay just like they get paid from Paypal, Visa, or Mastercard.  We think this is the real breakthrough that can take bitcoins out of the “bitcoin economy” and bust into the ‘real economy”.
 
We put together a video on our site, check it out and let us know your feedback.  There is also a newsletter you can sign up to that will keep you informed of our progress.
 
https://bit-pay.com
 
If you want to try bit-pay for yourself, head to STARE and make a purchase.  The July issue is $9.95, or about 0.65 BTC.
 
http://www.staremagazine.com/Issue.asp?IssueID=115

[Cusipzzz]

Good stuff Steve, making bitcoin payments that are transparent in USD for merchants is a huge step!

Well done.

[Bitcoin Swami]

Looks great man 

[bitlotto]

Site is giving "This Connection is Untrusted" warnings in Firefox. May scare some away.

[Bitcoin Swami]

Site is giving "This Connection is Untrusted" warnings in Firefox. May scare some away.

Hm never got that here.  wonder why.

[tonygal]

Site is giving "This Connection is Untrusted" warnings in Firefox. May scare some away.

Bitlotto what version of Firefox are you using?

I'm on Firefox 5.0 with WindowsXP SP3.  Got the verification here just fine.

[Steve]

Site is giving "This Connection is Untrusted" warnings in Firefox. May scare some away.

It's probably that your browser doesn't recognize the certificate authority.  Supposedly that CA is recognized by 99% of all internet users, but maybe not.  We plan on upgrading to a higher level of SSL certificate soon.

[Bitcoin Swami]

If your date and time aren't correct on your computer, it can do wonky things to your browsing.

[bitlotto]

It's probably that your browser doesn't recognize the certificate authority.  Supposedly that CA is recognized by 99% of all internet users, but maybe not.  We plan on upgrading to a higher level of SSL certificate soon.

Correct.

bit-pay.com uses an invalid security certificate.

The certificate is not trusted because the issuer certificate is unknown.

(Error code: sec_error_unknown_issuer)

Was while running Namoroka (Firefox/Mozilla based - TOR browser)

[klamathonsite]

when i get there theres only a login not a register page?
what are we supposed to login with? if we dont register.

[Steve]

when i get there theres only a login not a register page?
what are we supposed to login with? if we dont register.

We've not yet opened merchant registration (guess we should make that more clear on the site).  We're beta testing with a few merchants at the moment.  It will be a couple weeks before we open registration.

[wujh]

This is great. I'm not a IT developer but a financial analyst, but I just know this idea is what bitcoin need to ease the difficulty for the merchants to adopt bitcoin as a mean of exchange value.

I have a small tip for you, if you don't mind. You can talk to mtgox, campbx and other exchanges, and ask for a premium commission rate for you.

P.S
If I were a merchant and sold something with a 20% gross margin, I would like you to convert 80% of the BTC I got into USD and keep 20% of them as bitcoin. So why not offer the choice to your client? If only black or white choice, as a merchant, they will get running-out-of-working-capital problem if keep all the money in the bitcoin they get paid.

 If you offer the partially-exchange offer to the merchants, it will easily get them to keep some of them. later, They will spend more time to know about bitcoin and may try to use bitcoin themselves. This will make it a more widely accepted currency.

[evoorhees]

Wonderful intro video. Pretty and eloquent girl, and well-presented. You hit on the major pain points of merchants and addressed them well. Brilliant job. One nitpicky recommendation - the sound quality in the video isn't great. Not sure if it can be easily remastered?

I REALLY like your ambition and concept here. Will be keeping my eye on it.

[Steve]

If I were a merchant and sold something with a 20% gross margin, I would like you to convert 80% of the BTC I got into USD and keep 20% of them as bitcoin. So why not offer the choice to your client? If only black or white choice, as a merchant, they will get running-out-of-working-capital problem if keep all the money in the bitcoin they get paid.

 If you offer the partially-exchange offer to the merchants, it will easily get them to keep some of them. later, They will spend more time to know about bitcoin and may try to use bitcoin themselves. This will make it a more widely accepted currency.

Yes, I agree...we are initially offering either BTC or USD payout, but merchants will want more flexibility than that.  The hard part is doing it in a way that doesn't thoroughly confuse people.  That's a great point you make about it enabling merchants to dip their toes in the bitcoin pool so to speak.

[done]

Very nice. Best of luck with this. Excited to see how this develops.

[tonygal]

One nitpicky recommendation - the sound quality in the video isn't great. Not sure if it can be easily remastered?

unfortunately we're stuck with the poor audio quality on this one.  Maybe when we make it big we can rent time in a real studio 

[wujh]

One nitpicky recommendation - the sound quality in the video isn't great. Not sure if it can be easily remastered?

unfortunately we're stuck with the poor audio quality on this one.  Maybe when we make it big we can rent time in a real studio  

For a start-up, I think it's already very very cool audio, it's enough for attracting early users, but better one is need for earning average merchants' trust.

[tonygal]

For a start-up, I think it's already very very cool audio, it's enough for attracting early users, but better one is need for earning average merchants' trust.

I can send the mp3 audio file to anyone that thinks they could clean it up?  Are there any good audio editors out there who want a challenge?

[Saledo]

If I were a merchant and sold something with a 20% gross margin, I would like you to convert 80% of the BTC I got into USD and keep 20% of them as bitcoin. So why not offer the choice to your client? If only black or white choice, as a merchant, they will get running-out-of-working-capital problem if keep all the money in the bitcoin they get paid.

 If you offer the partially-exchange offer to the merchants, it will easily get them to keep some of them. later, They will spend more time to know about bitcoin and may try to use bitcoin themselves. This will make it a more widely accepted currency.

Yes, I agree...we are initially offering either BTC or USD payout, but merchants will want more flexibility than that.  The hard part is doing it in a way that doesn't thoroughly confuse people.  That's a great point you make about it enabling merchants to dip their toes in the bitcoin pool so to speak.

You would be surprised, I have been working with e-commerce clients since around 2000, most of them don't even understand interchange rates.  You want big adoption, make it easy to integrate into the major shopping carts.  Make a wordpress plugin that will allow purchases with bitcoin.  There are a ton of people (quite a few adult sites - especially single girl sites/cam girls) that cant or dont understand how to setup a merchant account. Open the door to these sites and you will start to develop an undercurrent that while isnt mainstream will have tons of mainstream users.  No matter your stand on adult entertainment, it has pushed innovation on the web since the beginning.

[Eri]

I get a warning saying the certificate is invalid as well, but i make a habit of not going to sites my browser doesn't like :3 would you consider uploading the video to something like megaupload.com? or www.multiupload.com which then uploads them to many share sites