Payment Address on Plastic "Credit Card"

[BradZimdack]

I made something that seems to be quite effective in helping me to explain Bitcoin to newcomers.  It's a plastic card, like a credit card, with a QR code of my payment address.  The idea is that if I wanted to receive a payment from someone in-person, I could hand him my card, he'd scan it with his phone, and pay me with his mobile app.  So far, I've only been using it for demonstration purposes to show how easy it is to send and receive money with Bitcoin, but the response I've been getting has surprised me.  Somehow showing somebody a tangible card makes the whole concept easier to understand.

If anyone wants one with your own address printed on it, I'm selling them at: http://www.paymyaddress.com

[1714046201]

1714046201

[1714046201]

1714046201

[evoorhees]

Nice!  I have something similar from a couple months ago, and indeed they are great for educating others.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Awesome.  Buying one now.  I don't "need" one but it is a pretty cool concept to take bitcoin beyond the traditional desktop wallet.

A modified version that was larger and you could stick on the wall/counter would be useful for physical stores or kiosks.
For stuff like swap meets a sticker version would be another alternative. 

[P4man]

"we can only ship within the USA at this time"



Why is it hard to ship internationally? You can just put it in an envelope, no?

[casascius]

I am interested in one, but not so sure I'm really interested in how the current version looks.  Though I am not an artist, so I really have no room to talk.  If you had four or six choices of artwork, I might like one of them better than the first.

Background art: a preferable option might be just "none".  Another option might be some of my hi-res bitcoin photos at https://www.casascius.com/photos.aspx, but then again I am heavily biased towards those.  You'd probably sell me a few cards for that reason if you did though, because as you may guess, I have an interest in carrying around cards that have my own coins on them.

Message choice:  In place of "scan this code to pay the owner of this address", I would rather mine said: "My Bitcoin payment address is <address here>".  No big fat arrow.  In place of the address at the bottom of the card, I would prefer to see "Bitcoin P2P Cryptocurrency - http://www.bitcoin.org".

Finally, you should strongly consider using the Ubuntu Bold font for all your text.

--
Just curious, are you using bitcoind on your web server, or are you drawing from a pool of pre-generated addresses?

[BradZimdack]

Thanks for the feedback.  I wasn't sure what kind of interest there would be for something like this, but there's definitely a lot of room for new/alternate card designs.  These cards aren't mass produced, so I do have the flexibility to print any design.  Theoretically, the check out page could offer a choice of several designs or even include a JPEG upload box to use your own.

Sorry I can't do international shipping.  If it were just the postage cost, I wouldn't mind but the USPS makes it a real pain to send anything out of the country.  You have to fill out a customs form and then wait in line to personally hand your item to someone at the desk.

For the checkout system, I have two servers interacting with each other.  One server runs the bitcoind daemon and the other server hosts the web site.  When the web site processes an order, it sends a request to the one with bitcoind to ask for a new address.  It displays this address on the screen as both ASCII and a QR code, and it logs that address in an SQL database along with the other details of the order (customer name, shipping address, quantity, order total, etc.).  This database entry also has a field for order status (values are either pending, paid, or shipped).  Every two hours, a cron job runs on the web server to check the balance of the addresses of all pending orders.  If it spots that payment to an address has been received, it updates the database entry for that order to "paid".

The purpose of using two servers is first for added security, and second so that the same system could potentially be used to manage payments for a bunch of different web sites across an array of different web servers.

I'll post a more detailed explanation up on the site a little later.

[DeathAndTaxes]

About USPS.

Customs forms are not required on First Class Mail International items that: Weigh less than 16 ounces and do not have potentially dutiable contents. Weigh 16 ounces or more; do not have potentially dutiable contents; and are entered by a known mailer.

https://webapps.usps.com/customsforms/helppickaform.htm

[casascius]

I send international all the time without going to the post office window.  I am using Stamps.com for postage, and it puts the customs form right on the shipping label, where necessary.  If I were just mailing plastic cards, these are documents to me... I'd stick them to a piece of paper with double-stick tape and mail them the same way I'd mail a letter.  You don't have to fill out a customs declaration to mail a birthday card, these can't be much different.

[BkkCoins]

Good idea. There are single custom card printers on eBay but they actually charge more.
I'd definitely buy these if you could do a custom design, ie. I send JPG of front and you just print as is.
And I'd also need international air mail shipping too. After all, Bitcoin is worldwide.

[sadpandatech]

"we can only ship within the USA at this time"



Why is it hard to ship internationally? You can just put it in an envelope, no?

Good idea. There are single custom card printers on eBay but they actually charge more.
I'd definitely buy these if you could do a custom design, ie. I send JPG of front and you just print as is.
And I'd also need international air mail shipping too. After all, Bitcoin is worldwide.

  Anyone wanting this outside of the U.S and not minding the few days extra wait to get reshipped, I will gladly order and mail to you for .1BTC (about .48 cents). Pretty sure it will cost me
 2 to 3 stamps(currently .53 cents each) at the least to get it there but am more than happy to eat a few stamps for fellow Bitcoiners outside the U.S.

edit; International option added! 

  And I would definetly like to see a page of design or custom design options if it is workable easily enough for you, m8.

[BradZimdack]

Customs forms are not required on First Class Mail International items that: Weigh less than 16 ounces and do not have potentially dutiable contents.
https://webapps.usps.com/customsforms/helppickaform.htm

This is excellent news.  Thank you for bringing that 16oz rule to my attention.  So I can now ship internationally!  I've added a country drop-down to the ordering page.

I've also added a more detailed explanation of how I wrote the checkout system if anyone's interested in the more technical side of it:
http://www.paymyaddress.com/bitcoin-payment-system.html

Next, I'll be working on a way to offer more and/or custom uploaded card designs.

[BkkCoins]

Wow. You seem like you're really on top of this. Looking forward to an image upload button.

I'd suggest maybe a simple file chooser upload with a brief statement of specs.
eg. JPG 637x900 (300 dpi 2.125" x 3") or whatever your machine requires.

A confirmation of the uploaded image would be nice to help avoid corrupt/mistaken uploads.

I guess a second (maybe better) option would be to overlay the QR code on the server and just upload the background. This has the advantage that you could have an option for "share design" to allow user contributed backgrounds to be shared in a library so that new customers could quickly choose from many designs without you having to design them. I know I'd be happy to do a couple designs and give them away.

Without some way to position the QR and address you would be rather limited in layouts - which seems to imply some meta data needed, perhaps in one of the the file headers which are easy to set in Photoshop? Just an idea.

[MoonShadow]

Order complete.  One bitcoin sent.

[casascius]

Question about your card printer: does it use dye sublimation for the colors and resin for the black?

(for the benefit of others): I have printed cards in the past. This is a common setup for card printers, and what this means: dye sublimation does a great job of shading colors without any little "dots", but a terrible job of edges.  The dye sublimation colors adhere to the card sort of like smoke, and edges aren't crisp like they are on laser or inkjet printers.  on the other hand, the resin does sharp edges, but is exactly one color.  Black.  Each card gets 3 dye sub layers (cyan magenta yellow) followed by 1 black resin layer.  With dye sub colors, you get mediocre results on edges of colors, sharp color transitions, and non-black text unless the text is outlined in black so that the dye sublimation transition is hidden.  Based on his sample, his use of black appears to optimize the card for the best appearance (all text is either black, or surrounded by black - nice job), but when considering different artwork, this weakness should be kept in mind for best results.

Have you ever noticed that corporate ID cards always look a little "dingy" compared to bank cards?  The difference is that ID cards are printed on blank white card stock using dye sub printers, typically by people who don't understand its weaknesses.  The photo will look great but the company logo and text is invariably awful, only because it's in color.  In contrast, bank cards are printed at the time of manufacture using different methods, which does fantastic results on color and text, but is only economical for large runs of the same art.

[P4man]

This is an awesome idea with tons of potential. It just needs a good graphics artist and/or custom design. You could make this look so good!
Just as an -ugly- example, but this here below is also a scan-able QR code of my wallet adress with 2 minutes of gimp:



Ill see if I can make a card design thats not ugly

[casascius]

This is an awesome idea with tons of potential. It just needs a good graphics artist and/or custom design. You could make this look so good!

The good news is I was able to scan this with a normal handheld laser barcode scanner, which keeps it cool.

The bad news is that, due to the previously mentioned problem regarding dye sublimation ink, the colored portion might not turn out very well on a plastic card.  The color ink in most card printers is excellent for printing photos, but not well suited for the sharp edge transitions needed in a QR code.  It certainly can't hurt to try, but don't count on much.

[Sekioh]

I haven't checked lately but isn't design specs that the QR reader can be multiple colors but require white background OR solid black code with any other color background?

Can't you put that bitcoin image behind the QR and have the QR black above faded coins image or logo? It'd look about the same as that made up image but the reader would read it and the black would mean better crispiness (mmm bacon?)

[P4man]

The good news is I was able to scan this with a normal handheld laser barcode scanner, which keeps it cool.

The bad news is that, due to the previously mentioned problem regarding dye sublimation ink, the colored portion might not turn out very well on a plastic card.

Depends how big you print it, but I dont foresee a big problem. Try blurring the above image, my android phone still picks it up.

[BradZimdack]

Question about your card printer: does it use dye sublimation for the colors and resin for the black?

Yes, I think so.  I haven't had much chance to experiment with this printer to fully test its capabilities and limitations, but your description of the print quality sounds about right.  Compared to a bank card, the colors are a bit subdued and edges, such as on small text, aren't as sharp.  I suppose this is just the trade-off for cost effective one-off printing.  The QR code scans fine, but I haven't tried with a color or stylized QR code yet.  The address along the bottom is 3.5mm and still readable, but I probably wouldn't recommend going any smaller than that.

I'm presently working on the image upload feature and I'll include some design specs and suggestions along with it.

[Sekioh]

Using a graphic library (php/perl/cgi) you can directly impose the address and a QR code automatically based on what they put in text field, so you can have them upload any image and alter it before you even see it, and can preview it to them. So they can download a template and just leave the space of bar at the bottom and a section based on a dropdown of where the QR goes, the rest can be their design then and no work for you after that point.