Unable to make a payment for using Segwit and not using a desktop wallet, wtf?

[Don Pedro Dinero]

I sometimes buy OTC products on an online pharmacy because they are cheaper than in the land-based ones. I recently saw that they accepted bitcoin and thought to pay with it this time.

I currently have a Ledger Nano and don’t have any desktop wallet installed, and, my surprise was that I wasn’t able to make the payment. I clicked on “how to make the payment” to see what was happening:

https://support.bitpay.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000245586

“How to Pay a BitPay Invoice with a Hardware Wallet and Desktop Electrum Wallet:

By default, none of the major hardware wallets support Payment Protocol. In order to send payments to BitPay invoices, you must use a Payment Protocol-compatible desktop wallet app linked to your hardware wallet.

This guide assumes that your hardware wallet is already set up and that you are setting up a non-SegWit hardware wallet.”

WTF?

I am using Segwit addresses and I don’t want to install any desktop wallet. I have paid using only my hardware wallet before, so I got angry and didn’t make the purchase.

Why this has to be so complicated? If I pay with a debit or credit card, I’m not going to have this problem.

These kinds of issues don’t help bitcoin adoption.

[achow101]

This issue is unrelated to hardware wallets or segwit entirely. It is solely related to the software that you are using (and yes, if you are using a hardware wallet, there is still a wallet software that you are using. Hardware wallets cannot operate completely standalone). Furthermore, the payment protocol is completely unrelated to segwit entirely; they only specify non-segwit in the guide because that is what they show for setting up Electrum.

Unfortunately there is no known easy workaround for this problem. Bitpay has removed other methods of getting addresses from their website. The only method that I know of is to extract the address from the payment protocol data itself which requires other specialized software such as https://github.com/achow101/payment-proto-interface.

[Don Pedro Dinero]

This issue is unrelated to hardware wallets or segwit entirely. It is solely related to the software that you are using (and yes, if you are using a hardware wallet, there is still a wallet software that you are using. Hardware wallets cannot operate completely standalone). F

Thanks for your reply. I have used to make other payments Ledger Manager connected to my hardware wallet, which I don’t know for sure if it is a software because it is a chrome extension. It has worked fine other times.

[bob123]

I have used to make other payments Ledger Manager connected to my hardware wallet, which I don’t know for sure if it is a software because it is a chrome extension.

A chrome extension is definetely a software.
A software is defined as 'a part of a computer system that consists of data or computer instructions' (from wikipedia).
Anything you are running from your pc (anything you are interacting with) is/has a software.

It has worked fine other times.

The wallet itself does work fine. It is just that it does not support the 'payment protocol' to interact with the bitpay invoices.
You can however still install electrum and use it as an interface for your nano s (electrum would be basically replacing your ledger bitcoin chrome extension).
This has no effect on the security/safety of your device/sensitive data.

[mdayonliner]

I am using Segwit addresses and I don’t want to install any desktop wallet. I have paid using only my hardware wallet before, so I got angry and didn’t make the purchase.

This is the best penalty they should ever get and they have it. The blame goes to bitpay. Instead of using bitpay as a payment processor that drag company should user another payment processor company. May be they do not know the better one. As a customer you can write then the business they are losing and can aware them to change their payment processor company.

Once bitpay will see they are losing the merchants for all these hassle then they will rethink to simplify their payment processing system. It's ridiculous IMO.

These kinds of issues don’t help bitcoin adoption.

The blame goes to bitpay again, I do not think coinpayment or other has this kind of complacency

PS: Have you tried updating your Ledger Neno framework recently?

[Don Pedro Dinero]

PS: Have you tried updating your Ledger Neno framework recently?

I don't know what you mean exactly but I updated the firmware recently and the instructions made pretty clear that if I was using a hardware wallet I had to use a desktop wallet as well, Electrum or other specified one, which I don't remember now.