CoinCard - Buying Amazon $ and gift cards with Bitcoin

[Stephen Gornick]

PayPal payments are sent using MassPay, so you pay no fees to receive the payment, however the convenience fee is a little higher to cover the costs on my side.

A vendor of mine accepts for payment only credit card and PayPal currently.  I do know from her kvetching that she loses 3% or so in fees each time I pay her.  I'ld like to make use of CoinCard to help with that.   If I use for the paypal address HER address instead of mine, then when she receives the payment from CoinCard she'll get the entire amount that was sent -- no fees to her!
  http://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_batch-payment-benefits-outside

The only problem is that when she sees the incoming payment transaction there's no way for her to know that the payment came from me -- it doesn't show my customer number or an invoice number that the transaction is paying.

Would it be possible for CoinCard to include an optional memo / comments field that will be included with the payment?

Well, two problems.  If for some reason she says she couldn't find payment, I wouldn't have a transaction number that she could use to search for the transaction either.  Would it be possible for the acknowledgement page (after my bitcoin payment to CoinCard is received) to display the PayPal transaction number as well?

At some point hopefully we can just skip this silly step of using PayPal as intermediary and I can just to send her payment in bitcoins directly where she, in turn, uses bitcoins to pay her vendors and staff.  Until that time, however, I'm happy to have CoinCard.

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[mndrix]

Yeah, this is really cool. Next time I order pizza, I'm definitely trying this out! Any chance you could add Papa Johns?

I'll add Papa John's to my list of gift cards to support.  Thanks for the suggestion.

Would it be possible for CoinCard to include an optional memo / comments field that will be included with the payment?

Good idea.  The MassPay API supports a memo field which is included in the payment notification email from PayPal.  Most gift cards offer a similar field.  I've added this to my list of features to support.

Well, two problems.  If for some reason she says she couldn't find payment, I wouldn't have a transaction number that she could use to search for the transaction either.  Would it be possible for the acknowledgement page (after my bitcoin payment to CoinCard is received) to display the PayPal transaction number as well?

I'll look into this.  I think the Mass Pay API returns the PayPal transaction ID.  If so, it should be fairly easy to support.

[Drifter]

Haven't had a chance to use the service yet, but I hope to soon, possibly today. Great idea. As others have said, thanks for filling a niche.


FYI, Dominos now has a large pizza with two toppings for $5.99 with the code 9159 at checkout online. YMMV. They had this deal earlier in the month and decided to bring it back.

Good deal and good opportunity to try out this system.

[dacoinminster]

I used the service a couple times while it was open on Friday. It worked great.

My suggestions for gift cards I buy regularly for my wife: Starbucks and Jamba Juice (incidentally, I get both of these at Costco for a significant discount off face value, so I might not buy them from CoinCard)

On the other hand, my wife might be less skeptical about bitcoins if they were bringing her a steady stream of frappuccinos and smoothies

One other thought: I do expect a drop in bitcoin prices as a result of this service being released into the wild. Bitcoin miners like myself who were saving up to meet the 800 dollar minimum required to get a wire transfer out of MtGox will now be able to sell their bitcoins much more cheaply and easily. If the service does not limit the volume in some way, this could have a major short-term impact on bitcoin prices as multiple people who were waiting to sell their bitcoins all use it at once.

How long until Coinpal/Coincard integrates with MtGox, or even replaces it?

[Stephen Gornick]

One other thought: I do expect a drop in bitcoin prices as a result of this service being released into the wild. Bitcoin miners like myself who were saving up to meet the 800 dollar minimum required to get a wire transfer out of MtGox will now be able to sell their bitcoins much more cheaply and easily.

This isn't the first "redeem bitcoins for PayPal" option out there:

• Bitcoin Market
  http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_Market
• Bitcoin Morpheus
  http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_Morpheus [Edit: oops, can only *buy* bitcoins using PayPal here]
• #Bitcoin-OTC
  http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin-otc

But it certainly is convenient (immediate and a competitive rate).  I agree that it will increase Bitcoin's utility as a currency.

I don't know if I'd go so far as to expect it to significantly affect the exchange rate in the markets for bitcoins, except possibly in this one way:
     Assuming CoinCard executes the trade on Mt. Gox immediately, it is possible that CoinCard's volume will cause volatility on the weekend as the outflow cannot be matched with corresponding incoming funding to Mt. Gox until the following week.  It wouldn't surprise me to continue seeing a pattern of the BTC/USD market rate dropping on the weekend and jumping back when newly added funds arrive Monday afternoon through Thursday.

[dacoinminster]

Yeah, I was aware of the other options, but bitcoin market isn't open to everyone, otc trading via IRC seems a bit too complicated for most average people, and as far as I can tell, there is no option to sell bitcoins to morpheus, although I may have missed it on his site.

Having a super-convenient and competitive service like this is going to make a much bigger impact, IMHO.

[Stephen Gornick]

I would have used CoinCard just now. I printed postage using PayPal -- with the transaction totalling about $1.50. Because I previously had sent money and drained my PayPal account to $0, I now will have a second ACH transaction by PayPal that will draw the $1.50 from my bank account.

I'ld much rather have been able to pre-fund my PayPal account with the $1.50 using CoinCard and then that ACH transaction would not have been necessary.

Bitcoin's utility just keeps increasing, day after day.

[Anonymous]

One other thought: I do expect a drop in bitcoin prices as a result of this service being released into the wild. Bitcoin miners like myself who were saving up to meet the 800 dollar minimum required to get a wire transfer out of MtGox will now be able to sell their bitcoins much more cheaply and easily.

This isn't the first "redeem bitcoins for PayPal" option out there:

• Bitcoin Market
  http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_Market
• Bitcoin Morpheus
  http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_Morpheus [Edit: oops, can only *buy* bitcoins using PayPal here]
• #Bitcoin-OTC
  http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin-otc

But it certainly is convenient (immediate and a competitive rate).  I agree that it will increase Bitcoin's utility as a currency.

I don't know if I'd go so far as to expect it to significantly affect the exchange rate in the markets for bitcoins, except possibly in this one way:
     Assuming CoinCard executes the trade on Mt. Gox immediately, it is possible that CoinCard's volume will cause volatility on the weekend as the outflow cannot be matched with corresponding incoming funding to Mt. Gox until the following week.  It wouldn't surprise me to continue seeing a pattern of the BTC/USD market rate dropping on the weekend and jumping back when newly added funds arrive Monday afternoon through Thursday.

Buy bitcoins on a saturday and sell on a monday = $profit ?

[Littleshop]

I can't wait till you re-open, I want to try a Bitcoin Pizza!

[abstraction]

Do you trust transactions through any Bitcoin banks, like MyBitcoin? If you use them, you will speed up transactions since you don't have to wait for a couple blocks to be generated to confirm their validity.

[mndrix]

CoinCard is now open and the 50 BTC limit is removed.  The only limit in place is the amount of coins in my account.  I'll try and keep the service up permanently now.

Do you trust transactions through any Bitcoin banks, like MyBitcoin? If you use them, you will speed up transactions since you don't have to wait for a couple blocks to be generated to confirm their validity.

Thanks for the suggestion.  I'll definitely consider it.

[Quantumboredom]

Excellent service just like CoinPal. Just sold 50 BTC successfully 

[dsg]

Great service mndrix.

I'm interested in suggestions for improvement, especially other gift cards you'd like to buy.  PayPal and Domino's are the only options for now.  Amazon and New Egg might be possible.  I can also support Dwolla payments, if there's interest.

+1 for NewEgg gift cards! They refuse non-US credit cards so gift cards seem to be the only way to order. If you start selling them I'll definately be a customer.

[Patrick]

This looks like a good service. Things like this will make entry into the Bitcoin market much easier for new users.

So, is this the next version of/replacement for Coinpal, Mndrix?

[mndrix]

So, is this the next version of/replacement for Coinpal, Mndrix?

CoinCard is basically the opposite of CoinPal.  CoinPal does PP->BTC and CoinCard does BTC->PP.  I also plan to offer additional gift cards through CoinCard eventually.

[Patrick]

So, is this the next version of/replacement for Coinpal, Mndrix?

CoinCard is basically the opposite of CoinPal.  CoinPal does PP->BTC and CoinCard does BTC->PP.  I also plan to offer additional gift cards through CoinCard eventually.

Yeah, I don't know why I forgot that Coinpal is just PP->BTC. I understood intuitively what was going on, but I just had a mental lapse I guess. Still, being able to sell BTC for PP or PP for BTC easily should be great for the currency.

[mndrix]

The service had a hiccup just now as the bitcoin daemon crashed on my server.  I've restarted it and a couple outstanding orders were sent.  Sorry for the delay.

[mndrix]

The bitcoin daemon hung again.  CoinCard is closed until I can figure out what's going on

[mndrix]

I'm not quite sure what's causing the bitcoin daemon to stop responding to API requests.  I'm opening CoinCard and leaving CoinPal closed to see if it happens again.

[slush]

I'm not quite sure what's causing the bitcoin daemon to stop responding to API requests.  I'm opening CoinCard and leaving CoinPal closed to see if it happens again.

Check your disk free space. I had similar problem when I was very near to 0.