How do businesses cope with Bitcoin transaction times?

[Reclaim3r]

Title says all. How do they? Is their some kind of software/API that allows a business to see a customer has performed their transaction so they wouldn't need to wait a ridiculously long amount of time?
My best assumption is they would be able to look it up through blockchain.

[AlexSm]

Title says all. How do they? Is their some kind of software/API that allows a business to see a customer has performed their transaction so they wouldn't need to wait a ridiculously long amount of time?
My best assumption is they would be able to look it up through blockchain.

Unless you are selling 200,000$ lambourghinis accepting it with 0 confirmations would be perfectly fine and safe

[Miracal]

Some bitcoin payment processors provides instant payment called offchain transaction without waiting any confirmation, such as coinbase.

[Reclaim3r]

Offchain transactions? How does that work?

[Reclaim3r]

Transactions are seen by the network almost instantly. What is the problem?

I was just curious. At first, I thought they would actually wait for the sum of bitcoins to be deposited into the business's wallet.
But it took me a bit to realize that all they need was confirmation that the sum was on its way, rather then making the customer wait such a prolonged amount of time.

[Eisenhower34]

Transactions are seen by the network almost instantly. What is the problem?

I was just curious. At first, I thought they would actually wait for the sum of bitcoins to be deposited into the business's wallet.
But it took me a bit to realize that all they need was confirmation that the sum was on its way, rather then making the customer wait such a prolonged amount of time.

If you are new to bitcoin this is a very good thread to read (as well as the links on the thread), as it will give you good information that is easy for an 'average' person to understand.

The newbie board/subforum will also have many people who have very advanced knowledge of how bitcoin works and are more then happy to help you with any bitcoin related questions that you may have and generally answer your questions in a way that most people can understand

[Reclaim3r]

Transactions are seen by the network almost instantly. What is the problem?

I was just curious. At first, I thought they would actually wait for the sum of bitcoins to be deposited into the business's wallet.
But it took me a bit to realize that all they need was confirmation that the sum was on its way, rather then making the customer wait such a prolonged amount of time.

If you are new to bitcoin this is a very good thread to read (as well as the links on the thread), as it will give you good information that is easy for an 'average' person to understand.

The newbie board/subforum will also have many people who have very advanced knowledge of how bitcoin works and are more then happy to help you with any bitcoin related questions that you may have and generally answer your questions in a way that most people can understand

Thanks    although I would say that I already know a good amount about Bitcoin. I was just curious as to how the transaction process was "sped-up" for business.
I've already confirmed what I thought.

[bornil267645]

That's the beauty of it, they don't. And this factor drives different exchanges to work on specific tech to outsmart one another.

[shorena]

-snip-
Thanks    although I would say that I already know a good amount about Bitcoin. I was just curious as to how the transaction process was "sped-up" for business.
I've already confirmed what I thought.

IMHO - and this is just technical analysis - a company accepting bitcoins should have at least one full node to see the transaction after it was broadcasted. The more nodes the easier it is to determine if the transaction has propagated throughout network or only to the companies node. If the transaction is well known within the network it is reasonable safe to assume that the majority of the miners know about the transaction and will confirm it within the next block as long as the fee is high enough. This can not prevent a carefully planned doublespend attack, but as I am told business owners take more risks when accepting cash as an employee might not be able to determine a fake bill. Should the transaction have no/low fee and/or its priority is low the goods/serivce/coffee etc. could be delayed until the transaction has 1 confirmation.

That's the beauty of it, they don't. And this factor drives different exchanges to work on specific tech to outsmart one another.

What? Care to elaborate? What does this have to do with exchanges? What "specific tech" to "outsmart" others?

[Elwar]

Same way businesses deal with the extremely long (6 to 18 months) wait for a credit card to be non reversible.

[Q7]

I guess the only way here is to look at the blockchain. Can't think of other way. Perhaps ask the customer to bear a higher tx fee so that it gets picked up faster and then refund the customer for paying the extra fee. But that would certainly end up a hassle. Plus it doesn't sound practical.

[Soros Shorts]

I guess the only way here is to look at the blockchain. Can't think of other way. Perhaps ask the customer to bear a higher tx fee so that it gets picked up faster and then refund the customer for paying the extra fee. But that would certainly end up a hassle. Plus it doesn't sound practical.

Technically the transaction won't be in the blockchain until the first confirmation. I guess services like Bitpay monitor unconfirmed transactions across various nodes and have a heuristic algorithm to figure out when an unconfirmed transaction is safe to accept.

[shorena]

I guess the only way here is to look at the blockchain. Can't think of other way. Perhaps ask the customer to bear a higher tx fee so that it gets picked up faster and then refund the customer for paying the extra fee. But that would certainly end up a hassle. Plus it doesn't sound practical.

Technically the transaction won't be in the blockchain until the first confirmation. I guess services like Bitpay monitor unconfirmed transactions across various nodes and have a heuristic algorithm to figure out when an unconfirmed transaction is safe to accept.

and a higher than usual fee will not result in miners finding a block faster. Most of the time you pay a fee your TX will be in the next block. Sometimes when there are almost 4k TX waiting [1] for a confirmation you might have to wait 3-4 blocks.

[1] as seen a few hours ago (~1830 on this picture https://i.imgur.com/kvH4ODO.png )

[StevenS]

My company uses the Blockchain API. The order is marked as paid after a number of confirmations. This number is currently 6, but it may be lowered to 1, because that's secure enough for our product.

[iCEBREAKER]

Title says all. How do they? Is their some kind of software/API that allows a business to see a customer has performed their transaction so they wouldn't need to wait a ridiculously long amount of time?
My best assumption is they would be able to look it up through blockchain.

Using Bitcoin to buy a latte at Starbucks is like using gold to buy groceries.  Retail spending is the wrong application for a store of wealth.

XCN has reimplemented the blockchain in such a way that safe zero-confirmation transactions are possible:

Cryptonite is the first altcoin to feature withdrawal limits, allowing users to set a limit on how many coins they can send from an address in one block. This is useful because it helps to prevent double spending and increases confidence in low-confirmation transactions. If a merchant can see that the withdrawal limit on an address prevents it from being emptied in a small number of blocks they can have much more confidence in any transactions sent to them from that address, even without any confirmations at all. So the main advantage of withdrawal limits is that 0-confirmation transactions become safer in the right conditions.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=713538.0