Bitcoin is way behind at mobile payments

[Seth Otterstad]

Banking startup Simple just rolled out Money Drop service.  You can see everyone near you with a Simple account and send money to them like this:


Why can't I do this with bitcoin?  I know FAR more people with a bitcoin wallet than a Simple account, yet paying someone for my part of the dinner bill with bitcoin involves calculators, QR codes, and physically passing phones around and pointing them at each other.

Here's an article on Money Drop:
http://www.businessinsider.com/simple-moneydrop-2013-10

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[Mike Christ]

Perhaps someone could design an app that simplifies the BTC experience, where you and your friends have profiles with a selection of addresses to send money to.  I don't see why it couldn't work, I only see that it hasn't yet been done.

[Rluner]

I was interested in how this was different from pingit, so after a few minutes of googling I found this link.

https://simple.com/blog/instant-simple-to-simple-transfers/

I believe this to be what the original poster posted.

I can't see how it's as handy as pingit, as pingit allows you to have any bank account.

http://www.barclays.co.uk/Mobile/BarclaysPingit/P1242603570446

Maybe pingit is UK only?

Maybe I'm missing something?

[Seth Otterstad]

The UK banking system is far more advanced and flexible than the US one.  In the UK, you can send a payment from any bank account to any other bank account in the middle of the night on a weekend, and it will get there in less than an hour.  And it is free.  And all the accounts have two factor.  So I guess you could say that bitcoin is EVEN FARTHER BEHIND the UK than it is behind US-based Simple.

[kwukduck]

paying someone for my part of the dinner bill with bitcoin involves calculators, QR codes, and physically passing phones around and pointing them at each other.

I don't know when you last used your bitcoin android wallet, but how hard is it to point your camera at your friends display or request a transaction with NFC and send it? takes exactly 1 second...

[elasticband]

The UK banking system is far more advanced and flexible than the US one.  In the UK, you can send a payment from any bank account to any other bank account in the middle of the night on a weekend, and it will get there in less than an hour.  And it is free.  And all the accounts have two factor.  So I guess you could say that bitcoin is EVEN FARTHER BEHIND the UK than it is behind US-based Simple.

using my bitcoin phone app is way cooler than using my bank account app to make payments.

Bitcoin has benefits far beyond a simple transfer system, at the moment i see it as more comparable to gold than currency but those are just my opinions

edit: there is no reason why a social networking type payment app thing could be designed for bitcoin, it just sounds horrible.

Maybe something more like GPG where you can load your public key(bitcoin address) to the key server and then your friends could search you based on your email or nickname,  still i prefer just simply scanning a qr code or copy and pasting a bitcoin address, maybe i am just behind on the times  

[Shallow]

Banking startup Simple just rolled out Money Drop service.  You can see everyone near you with a Simple account and send money to them like this:


Why can't I do this with bitcoin?  I know FAR more people with a bitcoin wallet than a Simple account, yet paying someone for my part of the dinner bill with bitcoin involves calculators, QR codes, and physically passing phones around and pointing them at each other.

Here's an article on Money Drop:
http://www.businessinsider.com/simple-moneydrop-2013-10

That app looks incredibly insecure :I

[franky1]

the app looks like it connects to a server that finds peoples profiles (picture, name, etc) this is one thing that nobody in the bitcoin comunty has done as they believe it goes against the whole 'decentralised' ethos of bitcoin.

although i do prefer the decentralisation of bitcoin, i do find that having a voluntary centralised service to put small amounts into for fast payment, preconfirmed funds to be held in. This would benefit the 'small transaction' mobile payment crowd into accepting bitcoin.

EG having a gateway that just stores £$25 (0.2btc) so that you can go to starbucks everyday that week and just press one button and walk out the door to pay, without waiting.

the mobile App solution for bitcoin needs to evolve passed a bitcoin-Qt clone, if its ever to gain a mainstream acceptance.

[digit]

You can already something similar with Gliph, in addition to the secure messaging they let you send/receive btc to your contacts. Their app is available for both Android/iOS and can also be used on website.

[dddbtc]

You can already something similar with Gliph, in addition to the secure messaging they let you send/receive btc to your contacts. Their app is available for both Android/iOS and can also be used on website.

+1 Gliph rocks

[Kluge]

The UK banking system is far more advanced and flexible than the US one.  In the UK, you can send a payment from any bank account to any other bank account in the middle of the night on a weekend, and it will get there in less than an hour.  And it is free.  And all the accounts have two factor.  So I guess you could say that bitcoin is EVEN FARTHER BEHIND the UK than it is behind US-based Simple.

Why on Earth are there so many UK Bitcoin users with a seemingly-great banking system like that? What could they possibly do to make people leave - keep government database of everyone's transactions without need of a warrant? Disallow cash withdrawals? Huge monthly fees and no interest?

[franky1]

The UK banking system is far more advanced and flexible than the US one.  In the UK, you can send a payment from any bank account to any other bank account in the middle of the night on a weekend, and it will get there in less than an hour.  And it is free.  And all the accounts have two factor.  So I guess you could say that bitcoin is EVEN FARTHER BEHIND the UK than it is behind US-based Simple.

Why on Earth are there so many UK Bitcoin users with a seemingly-great banking system like that? What could they possibly do to make people leave - keep government database of everyone's transactions without need of a warrant? Disallow cash withdrawals? Huge monthly fees and no interest?

as a brit ill tell you
i do love the speed of wire transfer, but i do hate the requirement to log into my bank. type in the other persons bank details. receive a phone call to verify that im processing the transfer. and then sending it.. it takes longer to set up a transaction then it does to actually send/receive.
where as bitcoin is less of a headache, even if both methods take about 10 minutes from start to end

theres other reasons, such as Teentrepreneurs (teenage entrepreneurs) who cant get fully functional bank business accounts due to being under 18, which snowballs onto being unable to open and start businesses due to requirements of a business account to hold funds..

bitcoin gives them more freedom to do what they want, how they want without all the red tape.

but with all that said there are not as many bitcoiners as you may think and convincing merchants of bitcoin benefits is a harder task compared to america. the 'faster payment' is a hurdle to jump over when trying to convince merchants

[Kris]

Maybe this is the future ?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=310027.0

[balanghai]

well, mobile is easy with mobile wallets because mobile payments goes to a merchant, in which has a hot wallet running.

It's like putting bitcoins to your smartphone wallet and paying the merchant with qr coded wallet.

[hivewallet]

Seth, we will be adding a feature like this to our desktop wallet early next year as a proof-of-concept. This will be a chance to peer review the idea in practice, before it goes to mobile. I'm sure that we can figure out the best ways to protect privacy.

[herzmeister]

iTunes vs BitTorrent, each to their own I guess

[BTCisthefuture]

I agree that bitcoin is behind in mobile payments. Plenty of places now accept other forms of mobile payments but still dont accept bitcoin or places that do accept bitcoin theres people who don't know how to set themselves up to pay with bitcoin or even get bitcoins for that matter.

Better ease of use for everyday customers is something that will help bitcoin out a lot. I think theres a gold mind to be made for the first people that really acheive this on a large scale.

[cowandtea]

Banking startup Simple just rolled out Money Drop service.  You can see everyone near you with a Simple account and send money to them like this:


Why can't I do this with bitcoin?  I know FAR more people with a bitcoin wallet than a Simple account, yet paying someone for my part of the dinner bill with bitcoin involves calculators, QR codes, and physically passing phones around and pointing them at each other.

Here's an article on Money Drop:
http://www.businessinsider.com/simple-moneydrop-2013-10

Good idea, but it will only do good if everyone is using it. Right now only less then 1% of the population know Bitcoin.

[Stephen Gornick]

Why can't I do this with bitcoin?

Well, today using a third party service I can send Bitcoin to anyone else knowing just that person's mobile phone number or e-mail address (using Coinapult, or Coinbase), or that person's Twitter (using @BTCTip bot), or that person's Reddit username (using BitcoinTip bot), etc.

A problem exists with spoofing though.   I can write the message:

Seth is hosting an all-you-can-drink beer meetup for 0.1 BTC.  To join, send him payment at: 1PC9aZC4hNX2rmmrt7uHTfYAS3hRbph4UN

And the problem is, .... you did not make this offer, and ... that address isn't even your Bitcoin address.   With Simple's P2P system such fraudulent activity is reversible and thus there is less chance that the scammer will profit, so there is very little attempts at such type of fraud.    If those transfers of funds were non-reversible their P2P payments system would become a cesspool with spoofed profiles and fake offers, essentially rendering it unusable and giving a black eye to Simple.

Now with the payment protocol coming in Bitcoin-Qt/bitcoind v0.9, verifying such a request as being authentic will be easier.

Additionally, I am cautious about using an app without there being two-factor authentication.  But if my mobile is my 2FA device and the app needing the 2FA code is on the same mobile, then 2FA really isn't giving me much additional security.  Right now, my only remedy for such a problem is to only hold in that E-wallet app as much money as I'm willing to lose should my device become compromised.   (In a similar manner as how I don't generally carry more than a certain amount of cash in my physical wallet in my back pocket either.)

These probably aren't the reasons a Bitcoin-based equivalent to Simple's Money Drop isn't already available, just that improvements to security will help make it so that such an app can actually be built and be useful.

[bg002h]

Y'all gotta see Gliph. There's a web version and an android version in addition to the iOS version pictured below...But Gliph is about way more than sending bitcoins easily...ever send a secure text message? With Gliph you can, and it's free. It's basically replaced pgp amongst my important contacts.