Interested in a simple Bitcoin Merchant Service for Retail, Email or Phone?

[mdbitcoin]

http://www.automtgox.com/Content/img/automtgox%20logo%20sml.pnghttp://www.automtgox.com

AutoMtGox is considering adding Merchant Services which would allow ANY retail owner a way to accept bitcoins from customers immediately at checkout, as long as they have a smartphone or pc monitor that they can turn to show to a customer.


How it would work is as follows (for retail in-store)...

• Customer indicates interest to pay with bitcoins
• Retailer connects browser on smartphone or PC to a bookmarked page on the automtgox website
• Retailer enters price in US Dollars and cost in bitcoins is returned with a wallet address, btc.to code and QR Code to have bitcoins sent to.
• Customer is shown the various address input methods and amount to send bitcoins.
• Customer sends bitcoins to address.
• Retailer is emailed a notification when bitcoins have been received with a link to confirm.
• Retailer clicks on link and browser shows payment information as well as the progress of conversion to US Dollars and sent to your bank.
• Sale is complete.

Process takes maybe 5-10 mins.

(for over the phone or email sale)...

• Customer indicates interest to pay with bitcoins
• Retailer connects browser on smartphone or PC to a bookmarked page on the automtgox website
• Retailer enters price in US Dollars and cost in bitcoins is returned
• Retailer retrieves or requests customer's email and clicks link to send email to customer.
• Customer receives email with amount requested and wallet address, btc.to code and QR Code to have bitcoins sent to.
• Customer sends bitcoins to address.
• Retailer is emailed a notification when bitcoins have been received with a link to confirm.
• Retailer clicks on link and browser shows payment information as well as the progress of conversion to US Dollars and sent to your bank.
• Retailer ships item at leisure.

It's a pretty rudimentary system but it works. AutoMtGox already converts bitcoins to US Dollars reliably based on the rules you set up so the only things we'd need to build are the following:

• Merchant Set-up Screen with margin over exchange rate to calculate bitcoins prices, btc.to address, and email notification settings
• Email alert notifications and customer email
• Merchant & Customer URL & pages
• Account poll-rate increase when merchant sales are triggered.

It's a lot of work but we want to take a stab at user interest here before we invest the effort. Please respond if this would be of interest to you...

Oh and of course, as before.. your bitcoins and US Dollars are safe on MtGox. What makes us different is we never hold your wallet or your money.

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[FreeTrade]

I think there's a lot of potential for a service that converts receipts at a BTC address, converts immediately on the market to USD, and clears to a user's bank account (the more frequently the better). However, I'd see the natural provider of this service to be MtGox.

For retail - I'd guess waiting 5-10 minutes for clearance would be a showstopper. I've seen escrow mentioned as the way to solve this problem. Also, maybe for a restaurant, the customer could pay X amount in advance, and receive change at the end of the meal.

E-mail / Web based invoicing might have a market.

Hope this helps.

n.b. Just a piece of friendly advice - using the MtGox name when you're not associated with them gives me less confidence rather than more in your service. If I were running MtGox, I wouldn't do any business with you until you agreed to change the name.

[mdbitcoin]

Thank you for your input.


We have no problem if MtGox were to provide the services we do. It would be more efficient actually. We built our service out of personal need because they do not.


The 5-10 minute wait is certainly a concern we have no control over. It may even be longer in some cases. This is entirely based on how many block checks MtGox requires.  This issue may actually justify only targeting business that take phone sales.


We already worked out the name of the business with Mark from MtGox. Our goal in including MtGox in the name wasn't to borrow on the success of the brand as much as try to state clearly that our relationship to your money is through the MtGox service. Our business only AUTOmates the functions of managing your wallets on MTGOX.  On reflection, it probably wasn't as keen as we hoped.


Along the same automation concept, we also have discussed setting up another business that allowed day-trading based on rules like buy at ___ and sell at ___ within some rotation of 7 day basis points.

Again, we won't be investing the time if interest is not evident.



 

[qikaifu]

are merchants able to convert a certain percents of their bitcoin received into USD, or they have just all or nothing choice?

[mdbitcoin]

qikaifu: That is already an option as part of the www.automtgox.com service.

To set this up, you would specify a percentage to send received bitcoins to another bitcoin address before conversion.