Kprawn (OP)
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October 05, 2018, 03:26:29 PM |
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The original idea with Bitcoin was supposed to be a alternative P2P payment network....Right? The other day, I happen to walk into a food merchant and they had a "Bitcoin Accepted here" sticker plastered onto the window, but on further inquiry they said that they only accept it, if payment was done via a specific payment processor. They do this because they are only interested in the converted fiat and not in the Bitcoin and the customers have to be identified via this service. (Also a auditors requirement) This is not real Bitcoin adoption and adds no value for Bitcoin, so why do we celebrate this, when merchants do this? I also used one of these payment processors to buy something on a ecommerce site and they have a 10 minute countdown for your transaction to confirm, if this does not happen within that 10 minutes... you are offered a refund to the Bitcoin address of your choice. (I lost a 45% discount on a purchase that was only valid for a day, because my transaction confirmation took longer than the required 10 minutes.) What do you think about this?
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mk4
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October 05, 2018, 03:33:10 PM |
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I'm still quite undecided on my opinions about those merchants that accepts BTC through payment processors like BitPay. I think it's fine though. I don't think it's something to celebrate about, but at the same time it shouldn't be something we should frown upon. Though unfortunately the BTC automatically converts to fiat, well at least some bitcoin users has an option to pay with BTC? To be honest I really don't blame the merchants though. If they we're accepting something that's like as stable as gold in terms of price volatility, then I'm pretty sure a good number would be willing to accept bitcoin straight off. But because of the price volatility, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't want to risk losing their profit by significant percentages by holding bitcoin.
These payment processors along with bitcoin debit cards are sort of "bandage" solutions for bitcoin adoption today. It simply just allows people to use their BTC. But as time goes and adoption increases(hopefully), these services will be irrelevant in the future. Just my 2 satoshis.
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OmegaStarScream
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October 05, 2018, 04:00:05 PM |
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It's not necessarily the case with all services though. Overstock for example is keeping bitcoin payments. Besides, the average user doesn't necessarily know that, so knowing that there is a use case for bitcoin, that could bring more people to the crypto scene. Sooner or later and with bitcoin growing more, they'll realize that bitcoin is worth holding to and they could simply run BTCPayServer on their own instead of paying a third party service to do so for them.
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Kprawn (OP)
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October 05, 2018, 04:00:43 PM |
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I'm still quite undecided on my opinions about those merchants that accepts BTC through payment processors like BitPay. I think it's fine though. I don't think it's something to celebrate about, but at the same time it shouldn't be something we should frown upon. Though unfortunately the BTC automatically converts to fiat, well at least some bitcoin users has an option to pay with BTC? To be honest I really don't blame the merchants though. If they we're accepting something that's like as stable as gold in terms of price volatility, then I'm pretty sure a good number would be willing to accept bitcoin straight off. But because of the price volatility, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't want to risk losing their profit by significant percentages by holding bitcoin.
These payment processors along with bitcoin debit cards are sort of "bandage" solutions for bitcoin adoption today. It simply just allows people to use their BTC. But as time goes and adoption increases(hopefully), these services will be irrelevant in the future. Just my 2 satoshis.
Ok, I understand that the volatility might be an issue and losses might be huge if they are processing 1000's of tx's per day, but these smaller merchants does not need that. (In some instances the volatility count in their favour, if the price went up) I just hope that the Lightning Network will eliminate the need for Payment processors, because payment is done instantly and volatility will have no influence.
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mk4
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October 05, 2018, 04:28:14 PM |
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I'm still quite undecided on my opinions about those merchants that accepts BTC through payment processors like BitPay. I think it's fine though. I don't think it's something to celebrate about, but at the same time it shouldn't be something we should frown upon. Though unfortunately the BTC automatically converts to fiat, well at least some bitcoin users has an option to pay with BTC? To be honest I really don't blame the merchants though. If they we're accepting something that's like as stable as gold in terms of price volatility, then I'm pretty sure a good number would be willing to accept bitcoin straight off. But because of the price volatility, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't want to risk losing their profit by significant percentages by holding bitcoin.
These payment processors along with bitcoin debit cards are sort of "bandage" solutions for bitcoin adoption today. It simply just allows people to use their BTC. But as time goes and adoption increases(hopefully), these services will be irrelevant in the future. Just my 2 satoshis.
Ok, I understand that the volatility might be an issue and losses might be huge if they are processing 1000's of tx's per day, but these smaller merchants does not need that. (In some instances the volatility count in their favour, if the price went up) I just hope that the Lightning Network will eliminate the need for Payment processors, because payment is done instantly and volatility will have no influence. Though the volatility could definitely work in their favor, I think it's just that they'd rather not risk having losses. Regardless if they're bullish on bitcoin or not. I personally don't think these types of payment processors are going anywhere soon though, even if lightning network gets adopted. If anything, probably the best case scenario is that LN will be implemented in these payment processors just to increase transaction speed. As long as bitcoin's price in volatile, I think payment processors that auto-sell to fiat are still going to exist. I think the only way they're going to be useless and irrelevant is when bitcoin get's significantly adopted, with very high market liquidity and all that. Basically when bitcoin isn't that volatile anymore.
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Thekool1s
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October 05, 2018, 04:31:09 PM |
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@mjglqw hit the nail on the coffin. These merchants are only in business, for one thing, which is to make a profit. They want to grab the attention of as many customers as they can and unfortunately right now, BTC users/owners are just a potential customer/client for them. They don't care about the technology yet. They are in so that they can stay one step ahead of their competition.
@Kprawn Exactly, Things like Lightning network will help but it won't change the fact that these businesses want to ensure that they make their profit. Until the issue of 'volatility' is solved. These payment processors will only thrive.
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Infinixhot1996
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October 05, 2018, 04:46:07 PM |
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The original idea with Bitcoin was supposed to be a alternative P2P payment network....Right? The other day, I happen to walk into a food merchant and they had a "Bitcoin Accepted here" sticker plastered onto the window, but on further inquiry they said that they only accept it, if payment was done via a specific payment processor. They do this because they are only interested in the converted fiat and not in the Bitcoin and the customers have to be identified via this service. (Also a auditors requirement) This is not real Bitcoin adoption and adds no value for Bitcoin, so why do we celebrate this, when merchants do this? I also used one of these payment processors to buy something on a ecommerce site and they have a 10 minute countdown for your transaction to confirm, if this does not happen within that 10 minutes... you are offered a refund to the Bitcoin address of your choice. (I lost a 45% discount on a purchase that was only valid for a day, because my transaction confirmation took longer than the required 10 minutes.) What do you think about this? This merchants as you know aren't investors of the bitcoin neither are they in business to promote the bitcoin,they are simply after their day to day profits.You really should not expect them to hold bitcoins considering they could incur a huge loss or a huge profit,its simply a two way thing.. Payment through a processor may not be something to celebrate much about,but dont you think it's a considerable improvement as merchants are now aware that a huge number of the populace own bitcoins,we could celebrate the fact that it's popularity is spreading far and wide.. While I'll definitely love a direct payment with the bitcoin,i doubt it's conceivable for now considering how volatile the bitcoin is
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Kprawn (OP)
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October 05, 2018, 05:00:05 PM |
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@mjglqw hit the nail on the coffin. These merchants are only in business, for one thing, which is to make a profit. They want to grab the attention of as many customers as they can and unfortunately right now, BTC users/owners are just a potential customer/client for them. They don't care about the technology yet. They are in so that they can stay one step ahead of their competition.
@Kprawn Exactly, Things like Lightning network will help but it won't change the fact that these businesses want to ensure that they make their profit. Until the issue of 'volatility' is solved. These payment processors will only thrive.
I was more thinking about the smaller merchants that has to pay a fee for the processing of these transactions by these payment processors. If they accepted bitcoins directly, they will not have to pay a payment processor additional fees to use their services and the customers will also benefit from that. I know they started accepting bitcoin, because they want to support all new payment options and also because it is only about profits for them, but I want this to change.
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mk4
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October 05, 2018, 05:22:35 PM |
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@mjglqw hit the nail on the coffin. These merchants are only in business, for one thing, which is to make a profit. They want to grab the attention of as many customers as they can and unfortunately right now, BTC users/owners are just a potential customer/client for them. They don't care about the technology yet. They are in so that they can stay one step ahead of their competition.
@Kprawn Exactly, Things like Lightning network will help but it won't change the fact that these businesses want to ensure that they make their profit. Until the issue of 'volatility' is solved. These payment processors will only thrive.
I was more thinking about the smaller merchants that has to pay a fee for the processing of these transactions by these payment processors. If they accepted bitcoins directly, they will not have to pay a payment processor additional fees to use their services and the customers will also benefit from that. I know they started accepting bitcoin, because they want to support all new payment options and also because it is only about profits for them, but I want this to change. Could be quite possible for those really small stores on 3rd world countries that are exempted from taxes, but beyond that, I don't think so. The taxes itself would probably be a huge pain to deal with. I'm pretty sure they're going to prefer 1-2% of payment processor fees compared to potentially losing 10% in a day. But hey. I'm pretty sure there are merchants out there that directly accepts bitcoin. I assume the percentage is >20% though. As much as I don't like that these payment processors are frequently being used by merchants that accepts bitcoin, I don't think there's anything we can do buy wait for now. Hopefully someday in the future. I just hope it's not beyond our timeline.
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pundit
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October 05, 2018, 05:32:27 PM Last edit: October 06, 2018, 09:31:24 AM by pundit |
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The original idea with Bitcoin was supposed to be a alternative P2P payment network....Right? The other day, I happen to walk into a food merchant and they had a "Bitcoin Accepted here" sticker plastered onto the window, but on further inquiry they said that they only accept it, if payment was done via a specific payment processor. They do this because they are only interested in the converted fiat and not in the Bitcoin and the customers have to be identified via this service. (Also a auditors requirement) This is not real Bitcoin adoption and adds no value for Bitcoin, so why do we celebrate this, when merchants do this? I also used one of these payment processors to buy something on a ecommerce site and they have a 10 minute countdown for your transaction to confirm, if this does not happen within that 10 minutes... you are offered a refund to the Bitcoin address of your choice. (I lost a 45% discount on a purchase that was only valid for a day, because my transaction confirmation took longer than the required 10 minutes.) I even surprised that someone got such chance, you had BTC in your account but merchant was not ready to accept it although you had convert BTC in some other currency may be fiat which is accepted by the concerned vendor. At current point of time it is wised to convert BTC into fiat currency and use fiat in the market, you may have some loss but you will not lose all your money. What do you think about this?
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131tc01n
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October 05, 2018, 05:34:30 PM |
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bitcoin should be an alternative to p2p payment, but in my opinion bitcoin is very inefficient if transacted in the real world or face-to-face transactions, bitcoin is more efficient when transacted in the digital world or cyberspace because in my opinion bitcoin is for digital and fiat for real
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Marcel555
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October 05, 2018, 06:15:05 PM |
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Even ICO projects which accepts payment in top cryptocurrency like bitcoin and Ethereum also convert it to fiat to clear their overhead. Although it's quite different as the accept other forms of payment as opposed to the bitcoin payment processor used by merchants. They are understandably trying to avoid the fluctuation problem.
It also gives you an opportunity to make purchases offline with bitcoin. And people woupdnbe be interested in the sign at the door, so it's a form of publicity. It is just a small step in the right direction.
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Caxton10
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October 05, 2018, 07:15:57 PM |
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I don't blame the merchants for those decisions. It is up for the bitcoin team to work hard and shorten transaction time and it is my believe that this will lead to more adoption of bitcoin as a payment method.
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Kprawn (OP)
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October 05, 2018, 07:30:47 PM |
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I don't blame the merchants for those decisions. It is up for the bitcoin team to work hard and shorten transaction time and it is my believe that this will lead to more adoption of bitcoin as a payment method.
My friend they already refined the software to be much faster than it was before with SegWit, but the payment processors are still working on a 10 min confirmation time and this is sometimes too quick to get even 1 confirmation. Compared to credit card payments that are almost instant, Bitcoin is lacking. (Yes, I know the credit card tx is not actually done, after you swiped it, but the merchant still accept that)
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franky1
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October 05, 2018, 09:00:03 PM |
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this issue is triple edged.
first its that the merchants manager has not learned about the true reason for bitcoin to want to keep or use bitcoin after getting it. i know that most merchants have costs such as labour, stock, leases, advertising. but theres still a small percentage they could decide to keep as coin for the managers own personal investment if they knew about its other benefits
second these payment systems are atleast helping businesses take a to dip into the bitcoin water. to try it, accept it without the hassle of self converting, without the headache of calculating exchanges. its then that the next phase occurs. such as getting staff of the merchant to want the btc the merchant gets. and suppliers and the leaseholder of the property. to keep the coin cycling in circulation away from exchanges
thirdly other things could be done where the merchant could set up an ATM where their own customers could buy BTC at the local store,
but over all (ignoring its a currency) as a payment method "we accept paypal" "we accept applepay" is just the same gimmick. a merchant doesnt want to use paypal/apple funds to spend within paypal(ebay) or within apple(apple store) they just want to get a wire transfer of bank account fiat. so the merchant needs to learn that bitcoin (a protocol) is also btc (a currency). but thats the learning curve and finding reasons to want it much like an american store accepting euro's. they know its a currency but they just accept euros as just a gimmick to get a different niche community to come in their store and need a reason to want to keep euros/btc
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I DO NOT TRADE OR ACT AS ESCROW ON THIS FORUM EVER. Please do your own research & respect what is written here as both opinion & information gleaned from experience. many people replying with insults but no on-topic content substance, automatically are 'facepalmed' and yawned at
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Osayo
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October 05, 2018, 09:14:07 PM |
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The original idea with Bitcoin was supposed to be a alternative P2P payment network....Right? The other day, I happen to walk into a food merchant and they had a "Bitcoin Accepted here" sticker plastered onto the window, but on further inquiry they said that they only accept it, if payment was done via a specific payment processor. They do this because they are only interested in the converted fiat and not in the Bitcoin and the customers have to be identified via this service. (Also a auditors requirement) This is not real Bitcoin adoption and adds no value for Bitcoin, so why do we celebrate this, when merchants do this? I also used one of these payment processors to buy something on a ecommerce site and they have a 10 minute countdown for your transaction to confirm, if this does not happen within that 10 minutes... you are offered a refund to the Bitcoin address of your choice. (I lost a 45% discount on a purchase that was only valid for a day, because my transaction confirmation took longer than the required 10 minutes.) What do you think about this? These are all very serious issues you raised here which have also been my worry too. If we are truly going to use Bitcoin as means of payment, just walk into a grocery store, pick whatever item and pay using Bitcoin, etc, then there has to be an improvement on the processing time or transaction time. I can't imagine when you have to wait or the store attendant spend about 10 or more minutes waiting for your transaction to be confirmed by the blocks. I think it somehow makes it ineffective. P.s. Sorry for your 45% discount loss.
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blackhawkeye1912
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October 05, 2018, 09:40:34 PM |
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Going mainstream and adoption of bitcoin are some problems that still need to be resolved to utilize bitcoin totally. One way to do this is to statt little by little something like this. We know that bitcoin needs to resolve the verification processing time. It's really very slow and that blocks bitcoin going mainstream.
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pooya87
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October 06, 2018, 03:44:29 AM |
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i don't think this is necessarily a bad thing for bitcoin and bitcoin adoption. we have merchants that don't have the time or ability to learn things and setup a secure payment gateway on their own generating new addresses, getting price, checking transaction for risks of double spend,... and a lot of other things. hiring someone may not even be an option where they are located or may even cost more! so by using a payment processor they pay a small fee but still accept bitcoin in a safe way and also are not worried about volatility. i'd say it is a good thing because everyone is a winner in this scenario. the merchant for accepting bitcoin easily and for bitcoin and customer because there is a place which is accepting bitcoin.
the 10 minute rule is strange though because it is the average time between the blocks so their failure rate should be higher than normal even during no-backlog times and even with high fees.
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Kprawn (OP)
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October 06, 2018, 06:14:33 PM |
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i don't think this is necessarily a bad thing for bitcoin and bitcoin adoption. we have merchants that don't have the time or ability to learn things and setup a secure payment gateway on their own generating new addresses, getting price, checking transaction for risks of double spend,... and a lot of other things. hiring someone may not even be an option where they are located or may even cost more! so by using a payment processor they pay a small fee but still accept bitcoin in a safe way and also are not worried about volatility. i'd say it is a good thing because everyone is a winner in this scenario. the merchant for accepting bitcoin easily and for bitcoin and customer because there is a place which is accepting bitcoin.
the 10 minute rule is strange though because it is the average time between the blocks so their failure rate should be higher than normal even during no-backlog times and even with high fees.
I think they implemented the 10 minute rule to reduce the impact of volatility, but unfortunately this time limit is too short for most of the tx's that I have done before. Payment processors should look into this problem and I have send them emails in this regard. This kind of thing might become very problematic in the future, because customers might become frustrated with stuff like this. I have not received my refund yet, because they are waiting for their Bitcoin specialist to do the refund.
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akram143
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★777Coin.com★ Fun BTC Casino!
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October 06, 2018, 06:33:25 PM |
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i don't think this is necessarily a bad thing for bitcoin and bitcoin adoption. we have merchants that don't have the time or ability to learn things and setup a secure payment gateway on their own generating new addresses, getting price, checking transaction for risks of double spend,... and a lot of other things. hiring someone may not even be an option where they are located or may even cost more! so by using a payment processor they pay a small fee but still accept bitcoin in a safe way and also are not worried about volatility. i'd say it is a good thing because everyone is a winner in this scenario. the merchant for accepting bitcoin easily and for bitcoin and customer because there is a place which is accepting bitcoin.
the 10 minute rule is strange though because it is the average time between the blocks so their failure rate should be higher than normal even during no-backlog times and even with high fees.
I think they implemented the 10 minute rule to reduce the impact of volatility, but unfortunately this time limit is too short for most of the tx's that I have done before. Payment processors should look into this problem and I have send them emails in this regard. This kind of thing might become very problematic in the future, because customers might become frustrated with stuff like this. I have not received my refund yet, because they are waiting for their Bitcoin specialist to do the refund. The process of pain with with kindness always not easier when you compared to other normal currency so we cannot saying the right on using the right payment process is not important for everyone and is not known one thing for people who using the normal cryptocurrencies so payment process will need to definitely improve by the Flipkart currency field uses.
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