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Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

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Re: Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

#131

Post by aestra »

kalleboo wrote: post #109
netcan wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Guess what? 10 million American households are unbanked or underbanked.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unbanked

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

#132

Post by aestra »

hnnewguy wrote: post #15
tomasien wrote: 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. With the NFC chips built into all new CCs (at least here in Canada) I tap my card and leave.

I don't want to tap my card and leave. I wish I could turn off that "feature."

A way credit cards are bad for consumers?

Science proves that you tend to spend less money when you pay with cash, especially on unplanned and/or impulse purchases. I guess the psychology of actually handing something over then having less of it afterwards makes people think twice about if they really need to spend the money. Also getting extra cash when you over budget has an extra step (trip to bank/ATM) so you're probably more likely to stay in budget or to rethink if you really need that over budget purchase.

http://www.livescience.com/2849-study-credit-cards-spending....

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/pf/08/pay-in-cash.asp

http://seekingalpha.com/article/20333-guide-to-credit-cards-...

http://business.time.com/2013/08/08/turns-out-you-only-think...

I especially think this is interesting:

>McDonald's found that the average transaction rose from $4.50 to $7 when customers used plastic instead of cash

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

#133

Post by hnrandom »

hendzen wrote: 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…

You don't need to copy and paste long Base58 encoded strings if you use this wallet: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bitbrowser-bitcoin...

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

#134

Post by hnnewguy »

aestra wrote: post #132
hnnewguy wrote: post #15

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.

>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. I don't want to tap my card and leave. I wish I could turn off that "feature." A way credit cards are bad for consumers? Science proves that you tend to spend less money when you pay with cash, especially on unplanned and/or impulse purchases. I guess the p…

>I don't want to tap my card and leave.

Then don't. No one forces you. Use signature only, or "chip and pin".

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

#135

Post by hnnewguy »

baddox wrote: post #104
hnnewguy wrote: post #15

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.

> 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."

>I take it you've never had your CC details stolen

No, but I've had fraudulent charges, which required only a phone call to complain, and they were reversed.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

#136

Post by waffle_ss »

I'd like to see an easing of the "prohibited businesses"[0] restrictions for Bitcoin payments, since they aren't beholden to the credit networks for these transactions. I have a business in the works that tangentially falls under category #2 so I may not be able to use Stripe as it currently stands.

[0]: https://stripe.com/prohibited_businesses

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

#137

Post by aestra »

hnnewguy wrote: post #107
ejfox wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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.

It was. Then there was a class action lawsuit against Visa and Mastercard brought on by Walmart, Target, Amazon, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_Card_Interchange_Fee_an...

A part of the settlement that allows merchants to charge fees to customers paying via credit card in order to recoup swipe fees took effect on 27 January 2013. Debit cards and transactions in the ten states that prohibit credit-card surcharges will not be affected. Many large retailers, such as Wal-Mart and Target have opted not to impose surcharges.[6] In the event of a return, surcharges are refunded along with the purchase price of the merchandise.[7] The National Association of Convenience Stores, also known as the NACS, complained that this measure "merely make[s] retailers the collection agents for the banks."[8] The National Retail Federation said, "that card company fees are the problem and the surcharge story is a volume that belongs on the fiction aisles. The real threat to retailers and their customers continues to be price-fixed hidden fees that can only be cured by transparency and competition." [9]

However, the way that gas stations got around the rules at first was they were allowed to offer a "cash discount." So CC price was the "real" price and if you paid with cash you got a discount. Same thing in the end though.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

#138

Post by seabee »

kalleboo wrote: post #109
netcan wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Almost certain of it, some places even tack on a fee for using a credit card instead of a debit card.

However, consumer protections for a debit card are nowhere near as good. e.g. in the UK at least, if you experience fraud you have to wait for your bank to refund your account, whereas you don't experience any loss with a credit card. As such I avoid using debit unless the merchant charges for credit.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

#139

Post by pc »

waffle_ss wrote: post #136

I'd like to see an easing of the "prohibited businesses"[0] restrictions for Bitcoin payments, since they aren't beholden to the credit networks for these transactions. I have a business in the works that tangentially falls under category #2 so I may not be able to use Stripe as it currently stands. [0]: https://stripe.com/prohibited_businesses

Agreed; I suspect our Bitcoin prohibited business list, once formalized, will be more relaxed.

Re: Stripe: Bitcoin Sign-up

#140

Post by seabee »

pbreit wrote: post #126
danielweber wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what stops the customer from filing a bogus complaint, same as they do now if they use a credit card?

Getting kicked out of the system.

Only if the incentives of the third party align this way, which is very unlikely as many merchants burned by PayPal/eBay can attest to.
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