btccard.com.au - new service for the Aussies

[smithytzu]

Hi guys,

I've setup a new simple pre-paid eftpos card site for the Australians around here.

Btccard.com.au uses eftpos (Australia's debit card) gift cards, which for Australians is pretty awesome because there's no merchant fees and it's accepted pretty much everywhere in Australia.

The site is really simple at this stage, you can simply select the value of the card you'd like, pay via bitpay and we send you the card within 24 hours (except weekends).

The obvious advantage of a pre-paid eftpos card is that we don't require your details (except where to send the card) and there's no bank account required at all, it's a simple way to put btc to good use in the fiat world.

I've kept it simple at the moment, If there's sufficient demand I'm going to extend the program to pre-paid visas (for global use) and re-chargeable up to $7000 on the card, as well as a logon to check balances, but really it's up to all the bitcoiners out there.

Any feedback from the Aussies would be appreciated.  If this is the kind of thing you like let me know, conversely if you've got some ideas about what you'd like out of a service like this also let me know and I'll add it to the todo list.

Any questions let me know.

Cheers

Smithy

[smithytzu]

We just received our first sale! Card is going out tomorrow

Some of the guys over at reddit have mentioned the agent fees, we've been able to get them down to 7% hoping to get them down further soon once we hit a bit of scale.

Cheers

Smithy

[r32godzilla]

Sounds great. As long as you provide a good service like this at a reasonable price I think you could be on a winner. You might want to fix up a few of the grammar mistakes on the site though.

Cheers.

[smithytzu]

Oops.  Where are the grammar mistakes?

[smithytzu]

Scratch that found one on the purchase page, if I've missed any others let me know, thanks.

[r32godzilla]

Scratch that found one on the purchase page, if I've missed any others let me know, thanks.

Ok no worries. Another one here on the FAQ page

"The BTC Card Service is 100% safe, we don’t store your data or info9rmation,"

[smithytzu]

Thanks for that.

PS Your card was sent this afternoon via express post.

Any issues let me know.

[r32godzilla]

Nice work. Got the card yesterday and its all loaded with the correct amount of cash. Excellent to be able to use it at anywhere that takes EFTPOS.

The support was very open, transparent and helpful which is nice to see unlike alot of other services.

Thanks again!  

[kano]

Found that Target rejected  it - OK everywhere else so far.

[smithytzu]

Found that Target rejected  it - OK everywhere else so far.

Appreciate the feedback.  Some merchants don't like the use of anyone elses EFTPOS gift/pre-paid cards but their own brand(and of crouse they'll accept all majorbanks).  You won't have any issues with over 99% of retailers.

We are working on a visa version of the card to cover any places that won't accept the standard eftpos card.

Any questions let me know.

Thanks

Smithy

[-ck]

I used this service and found it to be excellent and a great way to spend BTC buying everyday items. We had issues with Australia post delays and fuckage and it was professionally handled by the other end so I'm very pleased and look forward to using it more in the future. Highly recommended

EDIT: Ideas for the future (not necessarily original), should this take off, is the ability to refill the card, using something world recognisable like visa or mastercard, and even better, the ability to make purchases directly from BTC instead of converting to BTC at the time of receiving the card; i.e. You could put 10 BTC on the card, and every time you made a fiat purchase, the BTC would be converted at the current rate on the fly.

[smithytzu]

Thanks ck.

I've been looking into a fully customizable re-loadable visa which would also provide cash out as an option, load it with BTC and spend when you want to, It is possible, we can do it, I've spoken to one of the main providers wholesale banking products that links into the major banks and it can be done, but the capital outlay is going to be close to 100k by the time we do all the integration work and get the right kind of systems in place.  There's some big upfront costs for Anti Money Laundering stuff among other things when you step into the big boys world.

It's something I'm personally really keen on doing, but at this stage the market hasn't been big enough to justify, once we start to average around 5-10 card sales a day of our existing eftpos card, I'll probably suck it up and get the capex and do it.

I have spoken to one other provider that will be able to provide a re-loadable visa card to us without the capex (but high card costs), but they can't provide any integration, not even CSV import/exports which means we'd have to reload the cards manually which is just stupid and would cause all kinds of problems.

If we're going to do it, I want to do it properly, so at this stage I'm holding out.

In the interim, I'm focusing hard on the basics and ensuring we can offer a good solid service with solid customer service.


Smithy

[r32godzilla]

Thanks ck.

I've been looking into a fully customizable re-loadable visa which would also provide cash out as an option, load it with BTC and spend when you want to, It is possible, we can do it, I've spoken to one of the main providers wholesale banking products that links into the major banks and it can be done, but the capital outlay is going to be close to 100k by the time we do all the integration work and get the right kind of systems in place.  There's some big upfront costs for Anti Money Laundering stuff among other things when you step into the big boys world.

It's something I'm personally really keen on doing, but at this stage the market hasn't been big enough to justify, once we start to average around 5-10 card sales a day of our existing eftpos card, I'll probably suck it up and get the capex and do it.

I have spoken to one other provider that will be able to provide a re-loadable visa card to us without the capex (but high card costs), but they can't provide any integration, not even CSV import/exports which means we'd have to reload the cards manually which is just stupid and would cause all kinds of problems.

If we're going to do it, I want to do it properly, so at this stage I'm holding out.

In the interim, I'm focusing hard on the basics and ensuring we can offer a good solid service with solid customer service.


Smithy

Nice work. A reloadable VISA would be awesome. Aussies need to get behind this service! Good luck!