[2020-05-16] Pine64 Drops BitPay Before First Bitcoin Payment

[malevolent]

Unless it is a big amount to donate, maybe something >$5k, to suspect a money laundering?, I don't see honesty why should anyone give his full identity for 10 bucks! This is ridiculous.

They're collecting information, the more the merrier I guess. They don't require any dox when sending such paltry amounts of money, though, so you can write whatever you want in those fields.

The fee, however, is almost 16%! It's seems like it's a fixed fee ~$1.50 so not as bad when sending more but still, I thought the common practice was to charge the merchant (I complained in the past about a high fee for being unwilling to use BCH so I shouldn't be surprised...).

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[o_e_l_e_o]

BitBay uses outdated protocols to make BTC payments and forces users to install insecure/proprietary wallet software. It's not good for bitcoin.

Completely agree with you, but it is possible to make payments to BitPay without installing their wallet by decoding their payment links and paying the address contained in the normal way. There are a variety of open source programs out there that will do this for you, such as https://github.com/alexk111/DeBitpay. As of this recent blog post (https://support.bitpay.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005701523), apparently BitPay invoices will now also display an amount and an address in the normal way, although I can't confirm this since I do not use any company which uses BitPay.

I looked into donating to Wikipedia the other day, not only is the donation page buried pretty deeply, deeply enough for many people to miss it, but BitPay also requires an email address, a full name, and a full address.

Wikipedia need to do better. Compare that with the Bitcoin donation page for the Human Rights Foundation - https://hrf.org/donate-bitcoin/. Accepting payments via BTCPay, absolutely zero personal details asked for, and even has PayJoin support enabled.

The fee, however, is almost 16%! It's seems like it's a fixed fee ~$1.50 so not as bad when sending more but still

BitPay charges a "Network fee" to the user paying the invoice, which is variable depending on the mempool at the time, and also charges a "Processing fee" to the merchant, which is a fixed 1%.

[kjlimo]

https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=9888

I've reached out to see if they need any help setting up a payment processor...

Who do folks recommend if not Bitpay???

[o_e_l_e_o]

Who do folks recommend if not Bitpay???

See the first reply in this thread and the link within it I posted.

[kjlimo]

Who do folks recommend if not Bitpay???

See the first reply in this thread and the link within it I posted.

Thanks for the quick response! But allow me to be more specific in my question. BTCPay doesn't appear to have a convert to USD/fiat option.

Which payment processor do we recommend merchants to use to convert crypto to fiat/USD? Does one exist anymore?

Also, I briefly caught some of the AML/KYC discussion, and agree that we shouldn't need this for every BTC transaction; hopefully, only those above the $10k mark, or at least above $1k as a starting point (similar to casino's starting at $3k/$5k).

However, AML/KYC seems a small price to pay for getting bitcoin adoption growing. Privacy doesn't concern me (although I understand others it does affect them)... I think the average user is used to their phone tracking them and their credit card being linked, etc. so fighting the privacy fight is lesser for me compared to KYC bitcoin use.

We can fight the KYC down the road hopefully if we see it as stupid/inefficient.  I do understand setting it up from the beginning may be easier, but I would appreciate if folks don't worry too much about that if the merchants or consumers can get involved with bitcoin rather than being sidelined if that's a concession needed for prudence in certain jurisdictions at this time.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Ahh my apologies, I misread that as "Why do folks not recommend Bitpay".

The most commonly recommended alternative is BTCPay, which if you pair with a payment forwarding service, can be configured to auto-convert to fiat. There is a good medium post explaining one way of setting this up here: https://medium.com/@prayankgahlot/instant-fiat-conversion-with-btcpay-1d2f3dd57352. In-built crypto to fiat conversion is also on BTCPay's roadmap for the future. BTCPay is self hosted and does not rely on any third parties.

There are other custodial/hosted payment processors which have in-built conversion, but without the privacy invading and anti-bitcoin stance of BitPay. CoinPayments and CoinGate are both quite common. They obviously require KYC from the merchant, but do not require KYC from the customers as BitPay does.

Here is a list of some other alternatives: https://github.com/alexk111/awesome-bitcoin-payment-processors

agree that we shouldn't need this for every BTC transaction

We shouldn't need it for any bitcoin transaction. The whole point of bitcoin is to be peer to peer, and not require approval from some third party who needs all your documents and to perform a full background check on you before deciding whether or not you are allowed to spend your own money. That's what fiat is for.

However, AML/KYC seems a small price to pay for getting bitcoin adoption growing.

I would argue the opposite. If every time you want to spend bitcoin you are forced to perform KYC and send a photocopy of your passport to a payment processor, then bitcoin is going nowhere. There are already 20+ different payment processors, not to mention all the merchants who accept bitcoin directly, meaning you are more-or-less going to have to complete KYC for every new merchant you want to spend bitcoin at. Not only is that a massive inconvenience, but it's also a massive risk to your own security.

[Harlot]

~snip

I'm not too surprised, people are vocal because they got burned or had other negative experiences with them. I looked into donating to Wikipedia the other day, not only is the donation page buried pretty deeply, deeply enough for many people to miss it, but BitPay also requires an email address, a full name, and a full address.

This thing is given especially Bitpay is offering up similar services as Coinbase Commerce as well as them being situated in the USA they are automatically a service that is heavily regulated with AML compliances that's why they are recommending BTCpay as an alternative I guess since they become more anonymous when paying as well as get out of centralized control as much as possible that's one of the things crypto users are worrying about and BTCpay can eliminate these.

[kjlimo]

Ahh my apologies, I misread that as "Why do folks not recommend Bitpay".

The most commonly recommended alternative is BTCPay, which if you pair with a payment forwarding service, can be configured to auto-convert to fiat. There is a good medium post explaining one way of setting this up here: https://medium.com/@prayankgahlot/instant-fiat-conversion-with-btcpay-1d2f3dd57352. In-built crypto to fiat conversion is also on BTCPay's roadmap for the future. BTCPay is self hosted and does not rely on any third parties.

There are other custodial/hosted payment processors which have in-built conversion, but without the privacy invading and anti-bitcoin stance of BitPay. CoinPayments and CoinGate are both quite common. They obviously require KYC from the merchant, but do not require KYC from the customers as BitPay does.

Here is a list of some other alternatives: https://github.com/alexk111/awesome-bitcoin-payment-processors

agree that we shouldn't need this for every BTC transaction

We shouldn't need it for any bitcoin transaction. The whole point of bitcoin is to be peer to peer, and not require approval from some third party who needs all your documents and to perform a full background check on you before deciding whether or not you are allowed to spend your own money. That's what fiat is for.

However, AML/KYC seems a small price to pay for getting bitcoin adoption growing.

I would argue the opposite. If every time you want to spend bitcoin you are forced to perform KYC and send a photocopy of your passport to a payment processor, then bitcoin is going nowhere. There are already 20+ different payment processors, not to mention all the merchants who accept bitcoin directly, meaning you are more-or-less going to have to complete KYC for every new merchant you want to spend bitcoin at. Not only is that a massive inconvenience, but it's also a massive risk to your own security.

Thanks for sharing! I may use this in the future, but really would love to have an "easy" option. Perhaps we can simply rebrand this as "BTCPay by me" and leave the additional details for me to worry about when discussing with merchants.

As for AML/KYC, you shouldn't have to do that for buying a coffee... unless it's a thousand dollar coffee. I agree what you're describing is onerous and stupid, but following the laws shouldn't be that burdensome which is the point I was making.