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Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

stripe.com

101–110 of 198 posts

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

#101
post #93
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

No bitcoin will fix that because you can't reverse the charges. So there is no risk in shipping because you are 100% positive that you have the money you expect you have.

So there is no risk in shipping because you are 100% positive that you have the money you expect you have.

Only if you wait for a significant amount of time (days?) to verify the transaction. If you use a payment processor and they allow you to pass through transactions without verification, they are assuming that risk for you, but the risk is still there, and there is of course also risk caused by the currency volatility, chance of theft or loss of coins (very different from digital cash, more like paper cash), etc.

I'd be interested to know how companies like bitpay hedge that risk, or the risks caused by Bitcoin volatility, if indeed they do.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

#102
post #76

Awesome. Now to see how their integration works with regards to confirmation time. The best solution IMO is to use a risk analyzer to determine the number of needed confirmations. 0 conf for small payments for a merchant with a low fraud rate, with increasing confirmations needed as the size of the payment grows. I would look at BitPay's checkout flow to see the state of the art here. Also hoping they implement the p…

> The best solution IMO is to use a risk analyzer to determine the number of needed confirmations As I understand it, you can still feel pretty safe with 0 confirmations if you're monitoring the bitcoin network for double-spend attempts over the average network propagation time. If you don't see any double-spend attempts anywhere on the net by the time most of the net has seen your transaction, you're probably good.…

As you said, even if the original tx has propagated, a double spending tx with a higher fee will jump the line in a miner's mempool. Never assume miners are altruistic - they seek primarily to maximize their profit. Propogation is a useful heuristic, but its not a panacea.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

#103
post #94
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on a lot of other factors. Are my bitcoins on the card insured against loss or theft? Can I reverse the transaction if I get stiffed? If the answers are "no" and "no", then I'd probably still prefer my credit card for peace of mind. 3% isn't a huge discount in the grand scheme of things, and I get 1-3% rewards on my credit card for most purchases.

You can't do any of that with cash either...

What does cash have to do with this discussion?

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

#104
post #4

The concept that Stripe may be moving away from strictly supporting Credit Card payments (which are awful, but necessary for now) and into alternatives is so exciting to me that I am literally shaking. We're building infrastructure to make bank-to-bank transfers palatable to consumers and drive their cost toward zero, but it's only if thought leaders like the Collisons embrace the move away from CC's that the move wi…

> which are awful, but necessary for now As a consumer or business? Because as a consumer, I've never had a complaint about my CC, ever. With the NFC chips built into all new CCs (at least here in Canada) I tap my card and leave. You can't get more convenient than that. As such, I don't think credit cards are going anywhere.

> Because as a consumer, I've never had a complaint about my CC, ever.

I take it you've never had your CC details stolen, or less seriously, had your CC automatically shut down when you're traveling due to "suspicious activity."

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

#106
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No bitcoin will fix that because you can't reverse the charges. So there is no risk in shipping because you are 100% positive that you have the money you expect you have.

So there is no risk in shipping because you are 100% positive that you have the money you expect you have. Only if you wait for a significant amount of time (days?) to verify the transaction. If you use a payment processor and they allow you to pass through transactions without verification, they are assuming that risk for you, but the risk is still there, and there is of course also risk caused by the currency volat…

I think you're drastically overstating the risk of a double spend.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

#107
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which are awful, but necessary for now As a consumer or business? Because as a consumer, I've never had a complaint about my CC, ever. With the NFC chips built into all new CCs (at least here in Canada) I tap my card and leave. You can't get more convenient than that. As such, I don't think credit cards are going anywhere.

If you had the option to tap a Bitcoin card and have the same experience, but save 3% on the transaction, would you?

>but save 3% on the transaction, would you

It's my understanding that it's explicitly against the merchant agreement with the big CC players to have different prices for different payment methods.

Of course, that's difficult to enforce in practice for every Ma and Pa operation, but if you're operating on any scale, where a significant portion of your revenue comes from CCs, that will be an issue.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

#108
post #98
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

As others have said, risk=chargebacks which bitcoin does fix. with CCs merchants basically have to trust customers and being overseas makes you untrustworthy (like to chargeback). Lots of other things imply risk. The only way to reduce it is by finding out more about customers: full name, current location, previous location, chargeback history and anything else that the merchant, CC company, payment gateway and 3rd p…

You've described why merchants would want it. Now describe why consumers would want it.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

#109
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which are awful, but necessary for now As a consumer or business? Because as a consumer, I've never had a complaint about my CC, ever. With the NFC chips built into all new CCs (at least here in Canada) I tap my card and leave. You can't get more convenient than that. As such, I don't think credit cards are going anywhere.

The 1st order effects are on business. It's mostly the 2nd order effects that consumers feel. Marginally higher costs that inevitably pass to consumers . Merchant refusal to ship to "high risk" locations. More difficult international transactions generally. Fewer online vendors (=less choice & higher prices) of high risk (easily resellable) items. Then there are the effects of having such a thick intermediary, a duop…

> Some consumers can't get a credit card. It's hard for consumers vulnerable to overspending & borrowing to avoid the card's expensive credit component.

Aren't debit and credit cards 100% interchangeable these days? I've for sure never had my MasterCard debit card rejected.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

#110
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No bitcoin will fix that because you can't reverse the charges. So there is no risk in shipping because you are 100% positive that you have the money you expect you have.

So there is no risk in shipping because you are 100% positive that you have the money you expect you have. Only if you wait for a significant amount of time (days?) to verify the transaction. If you use a payment processor and they allow you to pass through transactions without verification, they are assuming that risk for you, but the risk is still there, and there is of course also risk caused by the currency volat…

> Only if you wait for a significant amount of time (days?) to verify the transaction.

What? Two or three confirmations are generally irreversible. Six - an hour, give or take - has been generally agreed to be absolutely irreversible since the original Bitcoin client (if it's not, there's something really wrong and Bitcoin isn't as valuable as we thought).

If you're using a payment processor which takes risk that doesn't need to be there because you're not going to have your items in the post in an hour anyway (i.e. the vast majority of merchants), you're simply wasting money.

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