Will that be debit, credit or Bitcoin?

[LakeBTC]

Would you like to pay for your morning coffee with your credit card or your bitcoin wallet?

If San Francisco-based start-up Shift Payments has its way, you'll soon be able to switch from real money to digital currency when paying with a single card.

The company is beta testing 100 cards with friends and family members. It allows users to make purchases with accounts from Coinbase—a bitcoin exchange—and Ripple—a digital payment exchange protocol that can support real and digital currency.

While the card does not currently access bank or credit accounts (just bitcoin accounts for now), co-founder Meg Nakamura says Shift Payments is trying to make that happen soon.

"We are having conversations with U.S. banks to see if we can get them comfortable," she said. "They are very, very interested. It's just a timing issue. So we are building out the product with the partners we have right now."

Users download a mobile app with the card, which they use to switch between currencies and accounts. The company takes a small percentage of each transaction.

"We modeled this after Coin," said Nakamura, referring to the digital payment card that consolidates multiple credit cards into one Bluetooth device. "We really like this gadget and hope to be able to work with it, but we don't have that hardware right now so we're doing it with a mobile app. It's the software solution to what could become hardware."

Nakamura hopes the company will become valuable to banks in addition to spenders.

"Unlocking this value is interesting for the banks because it means more transactions for them," Nakamura said.


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http://www.cnbc.com/id/101937441

[Kayex]

I'd personally like to pay for my morning coffee with Bitcoin at times.
But I probably wouldn't do it all the time.
I would most likely use my Debit/Credit Card.

[Possum577]

It's all about infrastructure.

Once the infrastructure is in place for retailers to easily receive the payment and for consumers to pay with BTC the two parties of the transaction will join in the happy BTC dance! I look forward to seeing it mature.

It would be great to have a BTC debit card that links to whatever address I select - like Coin but with a BTC option.

[Kluge]

Disappointing they're going with Coinbase, but this is the Big Thing I've been waiting on, personally, for a long, long while, now.

[CryptoHeaven]

In TV-series 'Almost Human' they showed 'bitcoin stick' as a future payment method and I loved it.

[SunBin]

It's all about infrastructure.

Once the infrastructure is in place for retailers to easily receive the payment and for consumers to pay with BTC the two parties of the transaction will join in the happy BTC dance! I look forward to seeing it mature.

It would be great to have a BTC debit card that links to whatever address I select - like Coin but with a BTC option.

They need to some how speed up the confirmation time for non-internet related purchase.

A store with long queue line isn't going to wait for more than than 5 mins for a transaction to complete.

[oceans]

This is all a step in the right direction I have to admit. I can imagine there are a lot of people who wish to pay for their coffee or any other kind of food or drink using bitcoins and having an option like this available even if it's only a few places will at least start it off to see how it goes. I personally myself would love to pay for something as small as coffee with bitcoins so having that option would be great for me.

[itsAj]

Disappointing they're going with Coinbase, but this is the Big Thing I've been waiting on, personally, for a long, long while, now.

I don't see how they could use any service other then one that controls the private keys. If the company that was providing this service had anything but 100% control of the private keys then it would be too easy to rip off the company.

I do have one question about this service though: what happens when you use this card for something like gas or for a meal at a restaurant. At these types of places the merchant will place a temporary hold on the account for the estimated amount of the transaction. Then several days later they will cancel the hold and present a new transaction with the actual amount being charged. What exchange rate would the customer have to pay? I am almost certain that the answer is the rate at the time the transaction is finalized. The problem with this is that it would essentially give coinbase (or whatever other service) inside information about future sales. If there is an uptick in the number of gas station and restaurant transactions then they would know there will be selling pressure in coming days and could potentially trade ahead of this happening.

[CozyLife]

In the long run, I'd like to pay for everything in bitcoin, but for now I need to hodl as many as I possibly can. The more I have when the price booms again, the better. I'm sure we all can relate.

[Cicero2.0]

Off chain transactions will be the fastest way to get mass adoption. Of course that also requires trust so it will take time. I personally would love to pay for my coffee with bitcoin.

[cccarnation]

Not one mention of drugs or black markets, though. How far we've come.

[jjc326]

This is exactly the type of thing I think bitcoin needs to go to the next level. Needs to be able to be treated like a credit or debit card, then people will "get" how to simply use bitcoin.

[illymoka]

"soon be able to switch from real money to digital currency when paying with a single card
All 5 million of these people have moved actual money into these accounts".

I don't think these people know what real money is, much less Bitcoin. A lot of these startups seem to be missing the point of Bitcoin. They are trying to integrate the old insecure system with Bitcoin. Why mix in a card-like system that depends on a third party if Bitcoin already has direct payment options? You're just making it less secure.

[raveldoni]

Of course it will be Bitcoin because cryptocurrency is the future.

[itsAj]

Off chain transactions will be the fastest way to get mass adoption. Of course that also requires trust so it will take time. I personally would love to pay for my coffee with bitcoin.

I agree with this. This is one major advantage that coinbase has over bitpay. The fact that there are a lot of coinbase customers that store their BTC on their platform and can spend their funds instantly into the accounts of other coinbase accounts is a huge advantage. As long as coinbase can be sufficiently trusted they will have the advantage of being able to guarantee some percentage of transactions instantly with the level of certainty of 6 confirmations.

[PalmerLaura]

"soon be able to switch from real money to digital currency when paying with a single card
All 5 million of these people have moved actual money into these accounts".

I don't think these people know what real money is, much less Bitcoin. A lot of these startups seem to be missing the point of Bitcoin. They are trying to integrate the old insecure system with Bitcoin. Why mix in a card-like system that depends on a third party if Bitcoin already has direct payment options? You're just making it less secure.

There will be a transition phase. You can't expect people to just jump from the one to the other. Hybrid systems will be with us for a long time.

[NotAtOld]

"soon be able to switch from real money to digital currency when paying with a single card
All 5 million of these people have moved actual money into these accounts".

I don't think these people know what real money is, much less Bitcoin. A lot of these startups seem to be missing the point of Bitcoin. They are trying to integrate the old insecure system with Bitcoin. Why mix in a card-like system that depends on a third party if Bitcoin already has direct payment options? You're just making it less secure.

They don't care how secure it is they just want their cut.

[StatusSeeking]

"soon be able to switch from real money to digital currency when paying with a single card
All 5 million of these people have moved actual money into these accounts".

I don't think these people know what real money is, much less Bitcoin. A lot of these startups seem to be missing the point of Bitcoin. They are trying to integrate the old insecure system with Bitcoin. Why mix in a card-like system that depends on a third party if Bitcoin already has direct payment options? You're just making it less secure.

There will be a transition phase. You can't expect people to just jump from the one to the other. Hybrid systems will be with us for a long time.

This. As much as these centralized services fly in the face of the decentralized nature of Bitcoin, there will be this transitional period where they make sense.

[logger]

"soon be able to switch from real money to digital currency when paying with a single card
All 5 million of these people have moved actual money into these accounts".

I don't think these people know what real money is, much less Bitcoin. A lot of these startups seem to be missing the point of Bitcoin. They are trying to integrate the old insecure system with Bitcoin. Why mix in a card-like system that depends on a third party if Bitcoin already has direct payment options? You're just making it less secure.

The "old insecure system" is user friendly whereas bitcoin isn't. That old system is insecure by design, it's built that way so that all the people that are constantly losing and forgetting passwords aren't constantly being locked out of their money and for all the people that are constantly getting phished, breaking devices, and getting malware they aren't at risk of losing everything with no recourse. It's a trade off between usability vs security.

[logger]

"soon be able to switch from real money to digital currency when paying with a single card
All 5 million of these people have moved actual money into these accounts".

I don't think these people know what real money is, much less Bitcoin. A lot of these startups seem to be missing the point of Bitcoin. They are trying to integrate the old insecure system with Bitcoin. Why mix in a card-like system that depends on a third party if Bitcoin already has direct payment options? You're just making it less secure.

Bitcoin as a direct payment system is unlikely to take off because it's astronomically more unforgiving for the masses that are prone to all those failures. These third parties exist because the market wants them.