OKPAY accepting bitcoin as a deposit method

[julz]

Introducing Bitcoin electronic currency support!

2011-11-07

Use one of the most anonymous peer-to-peeer digital currency as a direct deposit to fund your OKPAY account.

https://www.okpay.com/en/company/news/okpay-bitcoin.html


OKPAY is already listed as a way to deposit funds to TradeHill..   but what does the above announcement actually mean?
Is OKPAY on it's way to becoming a sort of bitcoin exchange by doing this?  

It's not clear to me how conversion between currencies at OKPAY is done...  but if I'm reading this right it's now possible to sell BTC using only OKPAY.

Does anyone here use the OKPAY service?
I'm wondering if it also allows converting other wallet currencies into BTC?  

It also seems that once you've set up a verified account - this would be a way (in conjunction with TradeHill) to purchase BTC via credit card.

[ineededausername]

Interesting.  How big is OKPAY?

[GoWest]

Interesting.  How big is OKPAY?

Big in Russia, apparently, Alexa ranking of 1268.  15,516 worldwide.  This is a big site.

[evoorhees]

It's not clear to me how conversion between currencies at OKPAY is done...  but if I'm reading this right it's now possible to sell BTC using only OKPAY.

From their site it says, "Use one of the most anonymous peer-to-peeer digital currency as a direct deposit to fund your OKPAY account."

So I think they now accept it as a way to fund your OKPAY account balance... thus anyone who accepts OKPAY now also indirectly accepts BTC.

[DeathAndTaxes]

OkPay has a prepaid debit card.  I wonder if you can withdraw funds (USD) directly from Tradehill onto your debit card.

[GoWest]

Not sure why this isn't getting more attention.  Is everyone asleep?  The site has 300,000+ users (as reported back in March) and probably manages tens of millions of dollars worth of transactions.  This will expose a hell of a lot of people to Bitcoin who have never heard of it before.

[Eveofwar]

Not sure why this isn't getting more attention.  Is everyone asleep?  The site has 300,000+ users (as reported back in March) and probably manages tens of millions of dollars worth of transactions.  This will expose a hell of a lot of people to Bitcoin who have never heard of it before.

Buy buy buy ?

[nmat]

So you send them BTC and they convert it to USD? Has anyone tried?

[BitPay Business Solutions]

I opened an account and sent 1 bitcoin.  They advertise 0% commission, but based on the MtGox pricing of 2.95, they are taking about 30 cents.



also, it looks like once you have a balance > $15 you can order the debit Mastercard through the mail.  You can reload the balance anytime and shop with it anywhere Mastercard is accepted.

So yes, I suppose now you can spend your bitcoins anywhere Mastercard is accepted.  But it's much more expensive for you, and the normal debit fees apply for the merchants.  But, if you have alot of bitcoins and you want to cash them out quickly, sure put them onto a debit Mastercard and go shopping!

[jav]

This is indeed pretty huge. It will be interesting to see if they run into any regulatory problems in terms of money laundering laws. Which also leads to the question of how much identity verification they will or have to do before they give you such a debit card. I mean - a debit card that can be funded with 'anonymous' digital money surely can't be that easy to obtain?

[Serge]

of course they do verification, like any other e-wallet service.

this is interesting news , people in eastern europe can now exchange their btc to cash

[dancupid]

I opened an account and sent 1 bitcoin.  They advertise 0% commission, but based on the MtGox pricing of 2.95, they are taking about 30 cents.

also, it looks like once you have a balance > $15 you can order the debit Mastercard through the mail.  You can reload the balance anytime and shop with it anywhere Mastercard is accepted.

So yes, I suppose now you can spend your bitcoins anywhere Mastercard is accepted.  But it's much more expensive for you, and the normal debit fees apply for the merchants.  But, if you have alot of bitcoins and you want to cash them out quickly, sure put them onto a debit Mastercard and go shopping!

I suspect they may be using Tradehill as their partner exchange - Tradehill prices did dip to $2.70 several times yesterday, which may explain the low exchange rate. You may have just got unlucky with your timing

[finway]

I'm sure btc exchanges are aware of this, because they must sell bitcoins, right?

[HostFat]

The next step is asking Steam to add support to okpay.
Than you will see an huge amount of GPU comming!

Steam forum are down now.
Someone should ask it on the suggestion section when they will come back.

I just asked yuplay.ru ( a good game key seller ) if they can add OKPAY support :-D
Every game cd-key reseller should support Bitcoin/okpay, because all their costumers have GPUs!

[LightRider]

Really an interesting development. I think Mojang/MineCraft should look into this payment processor also.

[HostFat]

Really an interesting development. I think Mojang/MineCraft should look into this payment processor also.

I asked to one of the team about it ( from Twitter )
lol, people will mine to buy minecraft :_D

EDIT:
http://getsatisfaction.com/mojang/topics/can_you_add_okpay_as_a_payment_processor
Put your votes here!

[Steve]

This will be use for international remittance.

[finway]

Can we call OKPAY   

A BANK ?

tHIS IS HUGE.

[ssaCEO]

It would be great if they sold Bitcoins, too, but I won't hold my breath for it. OKPay currency can be bought with a credit card. They'd be bearing an enormous risk of chargebacks. Moreover, they have an interest in keeping people in their own currency, not replacing themselves with an open sourced one.

[worldinacoin]

It looks good, may not be a bank but certainly useful.