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Shopify accepts Bitcoin

ecommerce.shopify.com

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Re: Shopify accepts Bitcoin

#11

Post by pallandt »

RickHull wrote: post #9
pbreit wrote: post #4

Will be interesting to see if Shopify (or anyone in general ecommerce) ever reports on the popularity of Bitcoin as a payment method considering there is no sense at all to use Bitcoins to purchase legal items in the vast majority of countries.

> considering there is no sense at all to use Bitcoins to purchase legal items in the vast majority of countries. This is quite asinine. I assume you've never tried to purchase an item in country A from merchant A' accepting currency A'', while you are in country B using bank B' with an account denominated in B''. The hurdles, generally, are numerous and diverse. Any lack of hurdles is quite exceptional, and complete…

While I agree that it shouldn't be automatically assumed that someone who has bitcoins to spend will use them for illegal purposes, I'm curious as to what specific hurdles you encountered as mentioned in your post?

In my country at least, if you want to purchase something online and in a different currency than your account and CC's denomination, the conversion is done automatically for you at checkout, at whatever the bank has set for the rate, usually a fair one. Works like this regardless of what store you buy from, could be in the U.S, Europe or somewhere else on the globe.

Re: Shopify accepts Bitcoin

#13

Post by pbreit »

RickHull wrote: post #9
pbreit wrote: post #4

Will be interesting to see if Shopify (or anyone in general ecommerce) ever reports on the popularity of Bitcoin as a payment method considering there is no sense at all to use Bitcoins to purchase legal items in the vast majority of countries.

> considering there is no sense at all to use Bitcoins to purchase legal items in the vast majority of countries. This is quite asinine. I assume you've never tried to purchase an item in country A from merchant A' accepting currency A'', while you are in country B using bank B' with an account denominated in B''. The hurdles, generally, are numerous and diverse. Any lack of hurdles is quite exceptional, and complete…

Credit cards work well in the situation you describe (if I understand it correctly).

Re: Shopify accepts Bitcoin

#14

Post by grey-area »

achalkley wrote: post #8
ewang1 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there's little risk to Shopify in allowing bitcoins to be used. Any risk is still on the seller.

Risk in what way?

Given the volatility, probably price fluctuations is the main risk. That could have an upside or a downside for a seller.

The seller would also have to trust bitpay (who it seems shopify are using) to store the coins securely, but that's really just like trusting any other payment provider, and hopefully bitpay have insurance and proper financial controls, unlike many exchanges.

Great to see this happening though - I wonder what the comparison on fees is between accepting bitcoin and credit cards, have the fees just moved from one provider (mastercard say) to another (bitpay), or are they significantly lower?

Is there anyone here accepting bitcoin who can enlighten us on the pros and cons?

Re: Shopify accepts Bitcoin

#15

Post by itsnotvalid »

RickHull wrote: post #9
pbreit wrote: post #4

Will be interesting to see if Shopify (or anyone in general ecommerce) ever reports on the popularity of Bitcoin as a payment method considering there is no sense at all to use Bitcoins to purchase legal items in the vast majority of countries.

> considering there is no sense at all to use Bitcoins to purchase legal items in the vast majority of countries. This is quite asinine. I assume you've never tried to purchase an item in country A from merchant A' accepting currency A'', while you are in country B using bank B' with an account denominated in B''. The hurdles, generally, are numerous and diverse. Any lack of hurdles is quite exceptional, and complete…

Considering that many of the coins are simply generated with electrify calculating hashes (proof for work done) out of nowhere, and a portion of it being generated by hijacking computers and many wallets getting stolen and became unrecoverable, there are still rooms for improvement (which Bitcoin itself couldn't solve unfortunately.) And there is no near instant payment which makes it quite hard for micropayments (sorry haven't followed much lately, does that getting improved?)

Re: Shopify accepts Bitcoin

#16

Post by unlimited_power »

achalkley wrote: post #7
MichaelApproved wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit off topic but is anyone trying to work subscription payments with bitcoin? Is that even possible without something like a prefunded account?

The only way you could do it without a "pre funded" account (online like Coinbase) was if you had a RPC-Client for your transactional wallet, say on your local machine. This client would schedule payments.

Also take a look at: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts#Example_7:_Rapidly-adju...

Re: Shopify accepts Bitcoin

#17

Post by elzr »

pbreit wrote: post #13
RickHull wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> considering there is no sense at all to use Bitcoins to purchase legal items in the vast majority of countries. This is quite asinine. I assume you've never tried to purchase an item in country A from merchant A' accepting currency A'', while you are in country B using bank B' with an account denominated in B''. The hurdles, generally, are numerous and diverse. Any lack of hurdles is quite exceptional, and complete…

Credit cards work well in the situation you describe (if I understand it correctly).

Credit cards & banking are much less distributed outside the developed world. While in the US, 63% of the 15+ population has a credit card, in Mexico it's barely 13% (in Latin America in general it's only 18%). This is a HUGE obstacle for e-commerce and bitcoin's cash-like, informality (no requisites, no need to register or be approved by a central entity) might allow it to spread where banks have so far been unable to. (Source World Bank Financial Inclusion Data http://datatopics.worldbank.org/financialinclusion/)

Re: Shopify accepts Bitcoin

#18

Post by nwh »

grey-area wrote: post #14
achalkley wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Risk in what way?

Given the volatility, probably price fluctuations is the main risk. That could have an upside or a downside for a seller. The seller would also have to trust bitpay (who it seems shopify are using) to store the coins securely, but that's really just like trusting any other payment provider, and hopefully bitpay have insurance and proper financial controls, unlike many exchanges. Great to see this happening though - I…

They use Bitpay, all the incoming transactions are converted to USD automatically.

Re: Shopify accepts Bitcoin

#19

Post by unlimited_power »

grey-area wrote: post #14
achalkley wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Risk in what way?

Given the volatility, probably price fluctuations is the main risk. That could have an upside or a downside for a seller. The seller would also have to trust bitpay (who it seems shopify are using) to store the coins securely, but that's really just like trusting any other payment provider, and hopefully bitpay have insurance and proper financial controls, unlike many exchanges. Great to see this happening though - I…

I am not accepting bitcoin or using BitPay but the fees seem to be much lower than any credit card: https://bitpay.com/pricing

Also, I'm not sure what you mean by price fluctuations. BitPay accepts bitcoin from the customer and automatically converts it to the seller's local currency at market price. So the price is always fair and the seller never deals with bitcoin.

Re: Shopify accepts Bitcoin

#20

Post by antonios »

pbreit wrote: post #4

Will be interesting to see if Shopify (or anyone in general ecommerce) ever reports on the popularity of Bitcoin as a payment method considering there is no sense at all to use Bitcoins to purchase legal items in the vast majority of countries.

> ...no sense at all to use Bitcoins to purchase legal items in the vast majority of countries

I'm speechless.

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