I know there are checkout services for the opposite ( i.e. those take take bitcoin and pay the merchant in US dollars ), but what about the other way around? Is there an easy service that would allow me accept credit-cards and paypal for my business, and yet "automagically" receive the payments in the form of bitcoin?
Any info would help, thanks!
Is this for online/e-commerce or retail point-of-sale? Also what country is the merchant in and where are the customers from?
For online/e-commerce, Paxum would have been ideal, as you could withdraw the funds to your Bitcoin exchange account. They've since been forced by VISA/MC to terminate their relationship with any Bitcoin exchanges.
OKPay, which works with bitcoins, used to at one time accommodate Visa/MC payment methods for their merchant accounts but it looks like they no longer do:
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https://www.okpay.com/en/services/accept-payments/index.htmlIf you accept Amazon Payments, those funds can be sent to another Amazon Payments user who would trade for bitcoins, for instance.
Using the banking system, the fastest approach would be to use something that can sweep your funds once they reach your bank into a Bitcoin exchange as quick as possible. Dwolla's FiSync would do this For example, a transfer from a Veridian credit union to Dwolla is nearly instant (hours), then to a Bitcoin exchange is just a short while as well.
But finding something that goes outside the banking system, I doubt you'll find much. If all you want to do is protect against the exchange rate fluctuations, you could have a USD account at an exchange, and then make a trade that matches each card transaction, but that takes having a full days revenues sitting at the exchange each day to be able to accommodate this approach. (i.e., cash management becomes a pain).