Bitpay Generating Invalid BTC Address (URL addy) Any Ideas?

[poker60950]

Hello. I have the Bitpay card and I always top-up/deposit funds from my Blackchain wallet. I always copy the address provided by Bitpay manually instead of using the bar code. I'll have Blockchain open on my browser and just input the info and send and it's always been perfect. Recently when I attempted to deposit/top-up my Bitpay card they started providing invalid BTC addresses for me to send the funds to. They look like this:

bitcoin:?r=https://bitpay.com/i/Lz7BxRPxLWFAF9JGyWyquc

I attempted to do a smaller test deposit sending to this "address" but the Blockchain wallet wouldn't let me because it said it was an invalid address. I then thought perhaps I'm supposed to go to the url portion of it in my browser but doing that just takes me to where I already am at. Without a valid address to send to I can't keep my card funded. Am I missing something or doing it wrong? I've been using them for months and never had a problem until this. I don't scan barcodes and such because I prefer using my desktop and FF to log into my wallets and do transfer myself. Any help is very appreciated. Merry Xmas

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[HCP]

I got an email from a service that uses Bitpay as a payment processor... and they indicated that Bitpay now require you to use a wallet that supports the "Bitcoin Payment Protocol"... it is an attempt to stop people sending to the wrong address, or not sending enough BTC (because their wallet subtracts fee rather than adding etc)

refer: https://blog.bitpay.com/payment-protocol/ and https://support.bitpay.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005559826

There IS a way around this... but it's a bit of a "hack"... You'll need to have Electrum installed (https://electrum.org/#download)... it will register the "bitcoin:" URL handler... so, in the Bitpay dialog, click on the "address" tab, get the URL and then copy/paste that into your browser, it SHOULD open up Electrum and will setup the outgoing transaction, like this:



you can then "right click" the invoice at the bottom and select "show details"... and you should see something like this:



PROTIP: If you don't want to type the address out by hand, you can click the "preview" button to see the OUTPUT addresses... just double click the one listed on the "show details" screen and then right click and "copy"

NOTE: you do NOT need to have any funds in the Electrum wallet for this to work, it'll just say "not enough funds", but you'll still be able to see the details of the request and the payment amount and address to send to.

[Bourguiba]

I got an email from a service that uses Bitpay as a payment processor... and they indicated that Bitpay now require you to use a wallet that supports the "Bitcoin Payment Protocol"... it is an attempt to stop people sending to the wrong address, or not sending enough BTC (because their wallet subtracts fee rather than adding etc)

refer: https://blog.bitpay.com/payment-protocol/ and https://support.bitpay.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005559826

There IS a way around this... but it's a bit of a "hack"... You'll need to have Electrum installed (https://electrum.org/#download)... it will register the "bitcoin:" URL handler... so, in the Bitpay dialog, click on the "address" tab, get the URL and then copy/paste that into your browser, it SHOULD open up Electrum and will setup the outgoing transaction, like this:
https://i.imgur.com/kiOkX4G.png


you can then "right click" the invoice at the bottom and select "show details"... and you should see something like this:
https://i.imgur.com/cObxtAg.png


PROTIP: If you don't want to type the address out by hand, you can click the "preview" button to see the OUTPUT addresses... just double click the one listed on the "show details" screen and then right click and "copy"

NOTE: you do NOT need to have any funds in the Electrum wallet for this to work, it'll just say "not enough funds", but you'll still be able to see the details of the request and the payment amount and address to send to.

I am confronted to the same problem as TS : to pay an invoice from bitpay i used they own wallet since they decided to use the bitcoin:?=URL format. But today even BitpayWallet doesn t work for me. So i decided to download electrum,  and copypasted the URL given by the invoice into the  PayTo field - it keeps telling me the same message : "payment URL not pointing to a valid server".

Any ideas on how to fix that? Or maybe really it s a problem on BitPay side?
Because as i understand from reading the code (https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/blob/master/lib/paymentrequest.py ) and comments -
of the coders, it s the message u get for trying to put an invalid format of adress (# Guard against `bitcoin:`-URIs with invalid payment request URLs).
Can anyone try to open this invoice on his end (just like HCP showed) in a wallet that supports this format?
Here is the invoice : bitcoin:?r=https://bitpay.com/i/T8qnej63zHSwNLKtmurLKx

[Foxpup]

Any ideas on how to fix that? Or maybe really it s a problem on BitPay side?
Because as i understand from reading the code (https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/blob/master/lib/paymentrequest.py ) and comments -
of the coders, it s the message u get for trying to put an invalid format of adress (# Guard against `bitcoin:`-URIs with invalid payment request URLs).
Can anyone try to open this invoice on his end (just like HCP showed) in a wallet that supports this format?
Here is the invoice : bitcoin:?r=https://bitpay.com/i/T8qnej63zHSwNLKtmurLKx

The problem is on BitPay's side:

Code:

$ wget -S --spider https://bitpay.com/i/T8qnej63zHSwNLKtmurLKx
Spider mode enabled. Check if remote file exists.
--2018-01-28 22:36:21--  https://bitpay.com/i/T8qnej63zHSwNLKtmurLKx
Resolving bitpay.com (bitpay.com)... 104.20.80.236
Connecting to bitpay.com (bitpay.com)|104.20.80.236|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response...
  HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden
  Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2018 22:36:26 GMT
  Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
  Connection: close
  Set-Cookie: __cfduid=d7127900092ab197a3196cd5b45c6c7fe1517178986; expires=Mon, 28-Jan-19 22:36:26 GMT; path=/; domain=.bitpay.com; HttpOnly
  CF-Chl-Bypass: 1
  Cache-Control: max-age=2
  Expires: Sun, 28 Jan 2018 22:36:28 GMT
  X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
  Expect-CT: max-age=604800, report-uri="https://report-uri.cloudflare.com/cdn-cgi/beacon/expect-ct"
  Server: cloudflare
  CF-RAY: 3e476e393b3c7229-AMS
Remote file does not exist -- broken link!!!

The server is behind Cloudflare, which sometimes (or always if you use Tor) requires you to solve a CAPTCHA to connect to the site, which obviously won't work with programs that aren't web browsers (such as Bitcoin clients). BitPay knows about this problem, but doesn't seem to be in any hurry to fix it.

[Bourguiba]

Thank you for the clarification comrade Foxpup! The problem is i'm not ussing TOR, just opera browser! But still, cloudflare service pops up each time i try to reach their site.

To fix the problem i foud it easier to copypaste the invoice ID into the noscrypt link :
https://bitpay.com/invoice-noscript?id= (YOUR ID)


Example :
let s say you copied this invoice :
bitcoin:?r=https://bitpay.com/i/T8qnej63zHSwNLKtmurLKx
your ID is T8qnej63zHSwNLKtmurLKx.
Result : https://bitpay.com/invoice-noscript?id=T8qnej63zHSwNLKtmurLKx

You should then be able to see the adress and the amount to pay.

[nullius]

The server is behind Cloudflare, which sometimes (or always if you use Tor) requires you to solve a CAPTCHA to connect to the site, which obviously won't work with programs that aren't web browsers (such as Bitcoin clients). BitPay knows about this problem, but doesn't seem to be in any hurry to fix it.

Thank you for the clarification comrade Foxpup! The problem is i'm not ussing TOR, just opera browser! But still, cloudflare service pops up each time i try to reach their site.

To fix the problem i foud it easier to copypaste the invoice ID into the noscrypt link :
https://bitpay.com/invoice-noscript?id= (YOUR ID)

Long-suffering Tor user here.  I should clarify the blocking issue and “noscript” workaround in hope it helps other Tor users, or non-Tor users as the case may be.

Bitpay’s support page for Tor users may currently bear the date of “January 04, 2018 02:28”; but it’s had substantially the same text for a very long time, including the same talk of “developing a fix” and an “immediate workaround”:

BitPay does not block either VPN or Tor users. This is a Cloudflare/Tor issue that we're investigating, and we are developing a fix to this issue for Tor users. There is an immediate workaround detailed at the bottom of this post.

[...skipping story which sounds not too credible; going to the pertinent part at the bottom...]

How can I view BitPay invoice details (address and amount) while using Tor?

Our no-script invoice works for Tor browser users. If you generate an invoice, simply copy the invoice ID for the invoice in question (E.g. JWi53uinKVUxhe72jCoqY in https://bitpay.com/invoice?id=JWi53uinKVUxhe72jCoqY) into the following URL: https://bitpay.com/invoice-noscript?id=INVOICEIDGOESHERE

If Cloudflare blocks your wallet from detecting the Payment Protocol URL on a BitPay invoice, you can fetch the invoice amount and address using this method.

Last I tried this, it actually did work.  But I still dislike Bitpay. #NO2X

[Zorkformentor]

Thank you for the clarification comrade Foxpup! The problem is i'm not ussing TOR, just opera browser! But still, cloudflare service pops up each time i try to reach their site.

To fix the problem i foud it easier to copypaste the invoice ID into the noscrypt link :
https://bitpay.com/invoice-noscript?id= (YOUR ID)


Example :
let s say you copied this invoice :
bitcoin:?r=https://bitpay.com/i/T8qnej63zHSwNLKtmurLKx
your ID is T8qnej63zHSwNLKtmurLKx.
Result : https://bitpay.com/invoice-noscript?id=T8qnej63zHSwNLKtmurLKx

You should then be able to see the adress and the amount to pay.

Wow, thanks so much for posting this. What a pain to figure this out since I rarely pay BTC and had not seen this URL syntax before. I have always used the address and set the miner fee. I was not in the mood to jump through the bitpay hoops.

[iconzi]

Thank you for the clarification comrade Foxpup! The problem is i'm not ussing TOR, just opera browser! But still, cloudflare service pops up each time i try to reach their site.

To fix the problem i foud it easier to copypaste the invoice ID into the noscrypt link :
https://bitpay.com/invoice-noscript?id= (YOUR ID)


Example :
let s say you copied this invoice :
bitcoin:?r=https://bitpay.com/i/T8qnej63zHSwNLKtmurLKx
your ID is T8qnej63zHSwNLKtmurLKx.
Result : https://bitpay.com/invoice-noscript?id=T8qnej63zHSwNLKtmurLKx

You should then be able to see the adress and the amount to pay.

Thank you for this awsome tips. Had to pay using Bitpay and was stuck. After following this I made it finally

[Bourguiba]

Hello guys,
I m still using bitpay, and as of today - the noscript link doesnt work. Apparently their team isn t asleep and are working on fixing bugs that we could use to simplify our lifes....
Does anyone have an updated solution for this matter? How to extract the normal form of a BTC adress from the

Code:

bitcoin:?r=https://bitpay.com/i/TXID

form?

[xPPx]

I received two errors yesterday. Both have been stuck for over 7 hours. All I wanted to do was transfer some Bitcoin to my BitPay debit card (USD) during the dump. I've done it several times before with no issues. Should I continue waiting, or delete payment proposal? Will the Bitcoin be returned to me? Anyone know a better remedy? Thanks in advance!

Cannot send payment
Cannot check transaction
Could not parse payment protocol
Illegal group end indicator

[vuki02]

Does anyone have an updated solution for this matter? How to extract the normal form of a BTC adress from the

Code:

bitcoin:?r=https://bitpay.com/i/TXID

form?

I have the same problem, does anyone have a solution?

[nullius]

Hello guys,
I m still using bitpay, and as of today - the noscript link doesnt work. Apparently their team isn t asleep and are working on fixing bugs that we could use to simplify our lifes....
Does anyone have an updated solution for this matter? How to extract the normal form of a BTC adress from the

Code:

bitcoin:?r=https://bitpay.com/i/TXID

form?

Oh, no!  The page which I referenced here:

Bitpay’s support page for Tor users may currently bear the date of “January 04, 2018 02:28”; but it’s had substantially the same text for a very long time, including the same talk of “developing a fix” and an “immediate workaround”:

...now bears the updated date of “March 10, 2018 17:58”.  And the only apparent difference is that more than half the page has been deleted.  It still says, “There is an immediate workaround detailed at the bottom of this post.”  But the “workaround” you report as non-working has now vanished down the memory hole!

Evidently, they must know that their system is broken, and are choosing not to inform customers who visit that support page.

(Archive of current version.  Unfortunately, I did not take an archive in January; and there does not seem to be one.  Upthread, I quoted the pertinent portion from what is now missing.)

This is a big problem.  Unfortunately, many companies are still reliant on Bitpay.  As a customer of other companies who sometimes needs to make payments through the horrid Bitpay, this could seriously affect me even though I never wanted anything to do with Bitpay.  They had better fix their broken garbage.

[wampy]

Does anyone have an updated solution for this matter? How to extract the normal form of a BTC adress from the

Code:

bitcoin:?r=https://bitpay.com/i/TXID

form?

I have the same problem, does anyone have a solution?

Enter your bitpay URL at https://decoder.bip70.org to get a normal BTC address to pay to. Remember to pay transaction fees on top of the amount given.

[nullius]

Does anyone have an updated solution for this matter? How to extract the normal form of a BTC adress from the

Code:

bitcoin:?r=https://bitpay.com/i/TXID

form?

I have the same problem, does anyone have a solution?

Enter your bitpay URL at https://decoder.bip70.org to get a normal BTC address to pay to. Remember to pay transaction fees on top of the amount given.

Any suggestions for Tor users whom a merchant redirects by https to a Bitpay invoice page?  I previously followed the instructions on the pertinent Bitpay support page, as described upthread.  Otherwise, Bitpay was inaccessible to me.  Neither BIP 70 nor any other Bitcoin standard is involved.

I soon will need to make a Bitcoin payment at a Bitpay-using merchant who works this way.

[vuki02]

Does anyone have an updated solution for this matter? How to extract the normal form of a BTC adress from the

Code:

bitcoin:?r=https://bitpay.com/i/TXID

form?

I have the same problem, does anyone have a solution?

Enter your bitpay URL at https://decoder.bip70.org to get a normal BTC address to pay to. Remember to pay transaction fees on top of the amount given.

When I add URL from  bitpay on  https://decoder.bip70.org reports a bug:
"received error Request failed with status code 400"

[HCP]

Any suggestions for Tor users whom a merchant redirects by https to a Bitpay invoice page?  I previously followed the instructions on the pertinent Bitpay support page, as described upthread.  Otherwise, Bitpay was inaccessible to me.  Neither BIP 70 nor any other Bitcoin standard is involved.

I soon will need to make a Bitcoin payment at a Bitpay-using merchant who works this way.

Did you try the Bitpay suggestion of "Vanilla Firefox over Tor"? It seems they are claiming that in your situation, you should be able to complete the captcha and see your invoice using this setup:

This captcha issue appears to be specific to the Tor browser bundle and not to Tor in general. Our team has tested and confirmed that vanilla Firefox over Tor presents the Cloudflare captcha correctly and allows users to proceed to payment.

I just tested this... and sure enough, The cloudflare captcha page is displayed in Firefox (over Tor) when the merchant redirects to "https://www.bitpay.com/i/TXID" and it redirected to the bitpay website after completing (NOTE: tested using egifter.com as it is the only bitpay merchant I know!)

You can then use https://decoder.bip70.org as mentioned above to convert the BIP70 URL and get the address and bitcoin amount.

LATE EDIT:

In actual fact, you could probably just ignore the whole redirect to bitpay.com and simply take the TXID from the URL and put it straight into the decoder as:

Code:

bitcoin:?r=https://bitpay.com/i/TXID_GOES_HERE

[nullius]

Any suggestions for Tor users whom a merchant redirects by https to a Bitpay invoice page?  I previously followed the instructions on the pertinent Bitpay support page, as described upthread.  Otherwise, Bitpay was inaccessible to me.  Neither BIP 70 nor any other Bitcoin standard is involved.

I soon will need to make a Bitcoin payment at a Bitpay-using merchant who works this way.

Did you try the Bitpay suggestion of "Vanilla Firefox over Tor"? It seems they are claiming that in your situation, you should be able to complete the captcha and see your invoice using this setup:

This captcha issue appears to be specific to the Tor browser bundle and not to Tor in general. Our team has tested and confirmed that vanilla Firefox over Tor presents the Cloudflare captcha correctly and allows users to proceed to payment.

I just tested this... and sure enough, The cloudflare captcha page is displayed in Firefox (over Tor) when the merchant redirects to "https://www.bitpay.com/i/TXID" and it redirected to the bitpay website after completing (NOTE: tested using egifter.com as it is the only bitpay merchant I know!)

It would be just like Bitpay to make such a suggestion!  Of course, I did not try this.  Thanks for trying to help—but I must state the matter plainly:

“Vanilla Firefox over Tor” will kill your privacy.  “Vanilla Firefox” is highly distinguishable from Tor Browser.  It reduces your anonymity set to the negligible number of people who use exactly the same Firefox on the same platform (with the same fonts, etc., etc.) through Tor—likely reducing your anonymity set to 1 right there.  Even worse, it lacks Tor browser’s anti-fingerprinting features—almost certainly letting your anonymity set be reduced to 1.  Although I am not affiliated with the Tor Project and can’t speak for them, I have spent enough time on Tor Project sites and mailing lists to know that their strictly stated official recommendation is to use only Tor Browser for web browsing through Tor.

Please protect your privacy, and do not do this.  I hope that you did not try it with any payment for which you have strong privacy or pseudonymity requirements.


Edit to add:  I would not be surprised if Tor Browser’s fingerprinting resistance is exactly what “breaks” things here.  Cloudflare loves to cavity-search your browser.  Just an educated guess...  caveat.

[HCP]

Good to know... in that case, would my "edited" suggestion be any better?

Grab the URL redirect... take the TXID out of it... and plug it straight into https://decoder.bip70.org

Code:

bitcoin:?r=https://bitpay.com/i/TXID_GOES_HERE

EDIT: Seems to be a bit more to it now... you need to specify BTC or BCH before the decoder will work properly...


Further testing results:

Currently, using "default" Tor Browser settings... when I try and do a bitpay payment... it attempts to load: https://bitpay.com/invoice?id=TXID_GOES_HERE

it then redirects to: https://bitpay.com/invoice-noscript?id=TXID_GOES_HERE

If I attempt to use decoder.bip70.org at this point, I get the Network Error 400 as someone mentioned upthread...

However, on the invoice-noscript page, it has links to "Pay with Bitcoin" or "Pay with Bitcoin Cash" which are URLs of the form: https://bitpay.com/invoice-noscript?id=TXID_GOES_HERE&buyerSelectedTransactionCurrency=BTC

By directly visiting that URL, it then seems to enable the BIP70 url and the decoder.bip70.org service will work with:

bitcoin:?r=https://bitpay.com/i/TXID_GOES_HERE


Am I the only one who thinks that bitpay are going about this totally the wrong way? and the merchants who use bitpay are going to see a marked decline in Bitcoin transactions?

[wampy]

Any suggestions for Tor users whom a merchant redirects by https to a Bitpay invoice page?  I previously followed the instructions on the pertinent Bitpay support page, as described upthread.  Otherwise, Bitpay was inaccessible to me.  Neither BIP 70 nor any other Bitcoin standard is involved.

I soon will need to make a Bitcoin payment at a Bitpay-using merchant who works this way.

I tried a few different vendors who use bitpay and didn't run into any Cloudflare issues, even when using Tor Browser. Perhaps this has been fixed already? If not, it might be worthwhile to try a new Tor circuit.

[vuki02]

Solved the problem with https://decoder.bip70.org/.
Thank you.