Question for business starting with BTC

[snarlpill]

Hey guys-

Posted this in development & technical discussion, but had no response and I'm not sure how many people go on there. A close friend of mine has a growing business and I have talked him into letting me help his website out and update/add some things. One of the things that I'm going to implement is the option of paying with Bitcoin. Before going further, we are not looking for a third party service like Bitpay, etc. to handle our transactions.
Currently the only option of buying his products is PayPal. When you click "add item to cart" it immediately takes you to his personal PayPal account. (I could probably change this.) I have heard of problems with PayPal and sites that also use BTC, can anyone confirm this and go into details?

This is what my tentative plan was:
Since I had heard of some BS between PayPal and Bitcoin, I was just going to have a receiving address for us listed, as well as a email address they can reach us at to confirm their purchase. For now I was planning on telling them a unique "Satoshi signature" in the response email that they would put at the end of their amount sent. I.e.- "235" so for a 0.05 purchase it would be 0.05000235 BTC sent. Quickly thinking about it I imagined not too many people paying with Bitcoin starting out so I will have more time to develop later on.   -AND-
I was going to have all of this info. in a picture instead of text, that way it couldn't be indexed and picked up upon as easily by PP or other sources. I know it would be slightly more of a pain for the end user paying with BTC as they couldn't just copy and paste our address. Also there would be a note and a check in the email to confirm they typed out our address exactly right. A link to my site's "What is Bitcoin?" page would also be included.
What do you guys think of that? Any ideas, comments, or concerns? I know many of you are Highly Knowledgeable about the Bitcoin network and web development, and I feel more comfortable asking and trusting you guys.

I was also considering the payment option of me emailing them a unique date and time that they would send in a signed message to verify their address. Do you guys think this would be a much better idea? I personally like the Satoshi signature idea. Not really sure why.

Thanks in advance to any and all help, comments, and discussion. My fiance and I are taking our daughter to the park now for an hour or so, and I will check back then.

Thanks,
snarlpill

[Vod]

If Paypal finds out you work with bitcoin, they may/will freeze your account.  Choose one or the other.

[railzand]

You're putting far too many hurdles in the way. Who on earth would do all that? Depends on what you're selling.

Why not bitpay or similar?

And, like Vod said, for now paypal is anti bitcoin.

Probably the best place to get positive advice is project development.

[snarlpill]

You're putting far too many hurdles in the way. Who on earth would do all that? Depends on what you're selling.

Why not bitpay or similar?

And, like Vod said, for now paypal is anti bitcoin.

Probably the best place to get positive advice is project development.

Vod did say PP or Bitcoin. But I couldn't go all BTC right now because his company does a lot of business and growing. I swear I have seen some sites that offered both, maybe somebody will add to the discussion with that.

Why would somebody jump through all the hurdles? Well, it's not a lot of hurdles in my opinion. People would just have to type our BTC address once and then could save it in their addresses. An email, sure, but maybe that could just be for the first time, and both parties would confirm that they had the proper address, and that the buyer would carefully save it -as is- for future use. Then we could just tell them for all future times to add a 4 digit (4 seperate numbers) Satoshi signature to their BTC total and email us that number afterwards.
But, if my friend was able to take orders through BTC, those orders would end up being cheaper for him to process, and this is savings that we could pass on to the end user.

Also, I was hoping to implement a referral program for his business. Every time someone's referral made a purchase, say-10% would go into their account via BTC transfer. I feel like this would be much simpler with BTC than say, USD.

Not BitPay or any third party like that. If we were doing this, it would be something that we would want to have sole discretion on and full control over. Most of our BTC we would probably HODL, unlike many business that "accept" Bitcoin through BitPay (or a similar service), and then immediately liquidate it into USD or another fiat currency.
Also, BitPay charges a fee. One of the whole points of this would be to make financial transactions cheaper and simpler- something we would pass on to the end user.

If we are fully unable to even mention paying with BTC on the site (even in image form), than I would still try to make it happen with word-of-mouth, advertising, and/or a special contact email visible on the site, i.e.- paywithbtc(@)hissite.com

Thanks for the responses though, guys. Hopefully some other people with experience on this issue will add to the discussion also.

snarlpill

[edd]

There are plenty of sites that give you the option of paying with PayPal, CC or bitcoins. PayPal only disallows buying or selling bitcoins directly using their service.

Using new addresses for all Bitcoin transactions is the best way to track payments. I generate a few thousand at a time and load them into a database to be presented at checkout. Why re-use addresses when it cost nothing to get a new one and avoid all possibility of confusion?

[snarlpill]

There are plenty of sites that give you the option of paying with PayPal, CC or bitcoins. PayPal only disallows buying or selling bitcoins directly using their service.

Using new addresses for all Bitcoin transactions is the best way to track payments. I generate a few thousand at a time and load them into a database to be presented at checkout. Why re-use addresses when it cost nothing to get a new one and avoid all possibility of confusion?

The part about PayPal, could you pretty much guarantee that? I am dying to set-up a 'pay with Bitcoin' option on his site as I redesign it. There would Definitely be no buying or selling of BTC on this site. Just 'Pay with PayPal' and 'Pay with BTC'. If you could pretty much promise me we would be alright doing both it would make my day. He gave me full creative control over it, and is down to start with BTC. The only thing is, PP is currently the Only option he has on there of receiving payment. If somehow things got fucked up and his site got "kicked out" of using PayPal, I could never regain the trust and respect I would lose.

As for the second part, is this what I need to do: Set-up a MySQL database with a bunch of different generated BTC addresses, then when they click "Pay with BTC" some php returns a new, unused BTC address from the database?

That is just what I'm thinking would need to be done. Thanks for the help.

[edd]

There are plenty of sites that give you the option of paying with PayPal, CC or bitcoins. PayPal only disallows buying or selling bitcoins directly using their service.

Using new addresses for all Bitcoin transactions is the best way to track payments. I generate a few thousand at a time and load them into a database to be presented at checkout. Why re-use addresses when it cost nothing to get a new one and avoid all possibility of confusion?

The part about PayPal, could you pretty much guarantee that? I am dying to set-up a 'pay with Bitcoin' option on his site as I redesign it. There would Definitely be no buying or selling of BTC on this site. Just 'Pay with PayPal' and 'Pay with BTC'. If you could pretty much promise me we would be alright doing both it would make my day. He gave me full creative control over it, and is down to start with BTC. The only thing is, PP is currently the Only option he has on there of receiving payment. If somehow things got fucked up and his site got "kicked out" of using PayPal, I could never regain the trust and respect I would lose.

As for the second part, is this what I need to do: Set-up a MySQL database with a bunch of different generated BTC addresses, then when they click "Pay with BTC" some php returns a new, unused BTC address from the database?

That is just what I'm thinking would need to be done. Thanks for the help.

I can't speak for PayPal.  I suggest reading their TOS.

[snarlpill]

Well, I was wondering if the businesses using dual payment of PP and BTC are Allowed to as stated (or not stated) in PP's TOS, or if they were kind of just sliding under the radar with it. Which end would you think it'd be closer to, just off the top of your head?

[snarlpill]

Does anybody else have any knowledge of or experience running a site that accepts both Bitcoin and PayPal?

I'm not looking for any "on-the-record" statements or answers, just personal opinions.