Interesting conversation with a retailer who formerly accepted Bitcoin

[nmteaco]

Hey, david... I have an idea that may help, at least a little, with the exchange rate:
BTCTicker has an image that calculates any exchange rate (using MTGox) for you for example:

http://btcticker.appspot.com/mtgox/1.00btc2usd.png
is
http://btcticker.appspot.com/mtgox/1.00btc2usd.png

and let's say you sell $17 worth of tea:
http://btcticker.appspot.com/mtgox/17.00usd2btc.png

Great! and since you can change a url with java-script, i can dynamically put in the price in dollars!

[1714150116]

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[1714150116]

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[myrkul]

Hey, david... I have an idea that may help, at least a little, with the exchange rate:
BTCTicker has an image that calculates any exchange rate (using MTGox) for you for example:

http://btcticker.appspot.com/mtgox/1.00btc2usd.png
is


and let's say you sell $17 worth of tea:

Great! and since you can change a url with java-script, i can dynamically put in the price in dollars!

Yup! Glad I could help.

[jwzguy]

You can now use bitcoins to checkout on our site....

It is not an ideal solution at all, I have to set the exchange rate by hand every day in the code of the checkout page (I could not figure out how to pull the current price from another domain with javascript)... and everyone who orders will be sending their bitcoins to the same address... which in the other thread I was told could lead to fraud.

However I think people looking to cheat the system are not going to be spending their energy trying to get free tea. Also this is just a stop gap measure until a plugin for my cart is available.

So... just use the shopping cart as normal and when you get to the payment page select bitcoin as the payment method and you will be given instructions on the address to send the payment.

-David

(It would be nice if someone tests out the system.... if you want your bitcoins returned instead of the order just write that in the comments box (i think bitfloor might keep some of it) )

David, did you contact Paysius about writing a shopping cart plguin that supports your current shopping cart?

[scribe]

You can now use bitcoins to checkout on our site....

...

(It would be nice if someone tests out the system.... if you want your bitcoins returned instead of the order just write that in the comments box (i think bitfloor might keep some of it) )

I might have to try this out tomorrow. Happy to have a quick look at grabbing an exchange rate via javascript too if you like. Will PM...

[ChrisKoss]

Awesome! Just placed an order for your Jasmine pearls and mango mate.  Can't wait to try them :-)

[nmteaco]

Awesome! Just placed an order for your Jasmine pearls and mango mate.  Can't wait to try them :-)

Thanks for placing the order, and helping me test out the system. It has not come into bitfloor yet... how long do these things usually take?

[BoardGameCoin]

Awesome! Just placed an order for your Jasmine pearls and mango mate.  Can't wait to try them :-)

Thanks for placing the order, and helping me test out the system. It has not come into bitfloor yet... how long do these things usually take?

Depends on the exchange. The general rule is 10 minutes for each confirmation. So, for bitfloor that's about an hour. There's a fair amount of variance however, so realistically it's more in the 0:30 - 2:00 hour time frame.

-bgc

[paraipan]

^ fixed the title for you  

Awesome! Just placed an order for your Jasmine pearls and mango mate.  Can't wait to try them :-)

Thanks for placing the order, and helping me test out the system. It has not come into bitfloor yet... how long do these things usually take?

60-90 minutes on average, they require 6 confirm to credit your account

To deposit BTC, send funds to your bitfloor wallet address. They will be available after confirmed by the Bitcoin network (6 confirmations)

A confirm means any subsequent bitcoin blocks, including the first one where the transaction got signed by a miner, and by protocol they are produced, on average, every 10 minutes.

[paraipan]

^ fixed the title for you  

Fail, you changed it from grammatically correct to become grammatically INCORRECT.

Hmm, please do write the correct form so I can fix it. I can't stress enough that here in Spain they don't teach the English language extensively

Edit: Found the error and fixed it  

[nmteaco]

I for one welcome our new grammatically correct (I mean incorrect, no wait... correct) topic overlords... 

[paraipan]

I for one welcome our new grammatically correct (I mean incorrect, no wait... correct) topic overlords... 

What are you talking about dude? It was a joke, I only changed my post's title nothing more, sorry about not being specific about it.

Btw, good luck with the bitcoin sales  will be recommending you to anyone who has an interest buying tea online, cheers

[nmteaco]

What are you talking about dude? It was a joke.

So was mine...


Also the transaction went through! Thanks to Chris Koss for taking the plunge and being the first person to try the new system!

[muqali]

What are you talking about dude? It was a joke.

So was mine...


Also the transaction went through! Thanks to Chris Koss for taking the plunge and being the first person to try the new system!

I just ordered an ounce of Earl Grey Vintage.

edit - although I just see that vintage isn't what I thought. I assumed vintage meant classic, tea and bergamot, not rose. I'll give it a try though, my next order will be bigger.

[BkkCoins]

Couldn't some of these problems be easily worked around if the popular exchanges offered an API that generated send-to addresses that would auto-sell at market? For low volume simple cases anyway.

eg. You put an image in your shopping cart that is generated from such an exchange API call. It says "Send 1.05BTC to 1ze656..etc" and that address is linked as "auto-sell" to your exchange account. And ideally the exchange sends a confirm email.

Now when a buyer sends that BTC there the merchant simply checks his exchange account that the USD were received, or believes the email confirm, and approves the sale.

Sure, it's somewhat manual but it's a simple feature that could help many low volume merchants accept BTC when they can't get full cart integration. And it improves liquidity for the exchange offering it as it will bring in trades at current market price.

eg. <img src="bitfloor.com?id=acctcode&amount=10.54"> is all the merchant needs to add much like a paypal button. The image gives amount in btc and address. The exchange tags that address as "auto-sell at market to this acctcode". It's a "magic address". Magic Computer Money should have magic addresses.

[Stephen Gornick]

Couldn't some of these problems be easily worked around if the popular exchanges offered an API that generated send-to addresses that would auto-sell at market?

Some do this already.  With Mt. Gox, it is "autosell":
 - https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/MtGox/API/HTTP/v1#Merchant_System

Also, the Checkout Buttons for Mt. Gox have a checkbox where you can indicate that you would like autosell (to have the bitcoins sold at market to USDs).  Here's a site using that -- see the "site-wide pass" at the bottom:

 - http://chipcollection.com/webstore/ordering.html

[BkkCoins]

Also, the Checkout Buttons for Mt. Gox have a checkbox where you can indicate that you would like autosell (to have the bitcoins sold at market to USDs).  Here's a site using that -- see the "site-wide pass" at the bottom:

 - http://chipcollection.com/webstore/ordering.html

That's cool that as you hover over the button it updates price as market changes. Now if I could just think of a great idea that hasn't been done already...

[nmteaco]

Also, the Checkout Buttons for Mt. Gox have a checkbox where you can indicate that you would like autosell (to have the bitcoins sold at market to USDs).

I could not figure out how to make the mt. gox checkout button dynamic... When creating the button you have to put in a value... even if you change that value in the code they give you, once the customer clicks the button and goes to mtgox site the original amount shows back up again. This makes the button useless for shopping carts with different values at checkout.

[Stephen Gornick]

Also, the Checkout Buttons for Mt. Gox have a checkbox where you can indicate that you would like autosell (to have the bitcoins sold at market to USDs).

I could not figure out how to make the mt. gox checkout button dynamic... When creating the button you have to put in a value... even if you change that value in the code they give you, once the customer clicks the button and goes to mtgox site the original amount shows back up again. This makes the button useless for shopping carts with different values at checkout.

The one you create using the Checkout Button web tool is only like a "pay now" button for a static amount.

For dynamic pricing, the ecommerce/cart script you are using calls the API to get the URL and transaction ID:
 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/MtGox/API/HTTP/v1#Order_Creation

Then your template uses that transaction ID for the html form:
 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/MtGox/API/HTTP/v1#Dynamic_Button

To use the API, you'll need an API key and secret that you've added to your Mt. Gox account created using the "Merchant" role.

Then those two pieces of data are used to build the request header.  It is a little technical (i.e., a little programming knowledge is helpful).
 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/MtGox/API/HTTP#Authentication

I don't know how easy it would be then to tweak your shopping cart software to be compatible with Mt. Gox.  They have one shopping cart they work with -- Magento.  They've released their extension for it:
 - https://github.com/MtGox/magento

Here's an overview of Mt. Gox merchant tools:
- http://mtgox.com/merchant

[scribe]

Has anyone tried out the walletbit.com instant exchange functionality yet? https://walletbit.com/exchange

Seems to use MtGox to turn BTC into USD as soon as possible, so you dampen the effects of the price of BTC changing - i.e. BTC namely just becomes the payment protocol.

Not sure on fees, ease of use though.

[Stephen Gornick]

So... just use the shopping cart as normal and when you get to the payment page select bitcoin as the payment method and you will be given instructions on the address to send the payment.

-David

Will you be accepting bitcoin payments for purchases at your physical location/store as well?

There is a pretty low-tech method for doing this available now. 

Launch a mobile app (Blockchain for Android) .
Click Request money.
For the amount, click the pen icon to enter USD amount.
After entering the amount it will show a QR code.
Tap the QR code to make it larger and present that to the customer..

Using a web-based EWallet this can be done as well, use Preev to convert USD to BTCs:
 - http://www.Preev.com