How do you accept BitCoin as a payment option?

Here are some things to consider:

• Bitcoins are not regulated by a central body (no oversight or anyone to go to if you have problems). In the past, theft, manipulation and black market activities have hurt the market.
• Unlike standard currency where the transaction fees are paid by the vendor, any fees have to be paid by the buyer.
• There is no protection for the buyer - he can not do a chargeback as is done with credit cards.
• Bitcoin buyers are not protected by refund rights that come with most other payment systems.

Obviously, I'm a skeptic at present . . . but not saying that Bitcoins can't be a possible alternative in the future. Right now, for me at least, there are too many questions left unanswered. I'm sure I'll give it a try if they are ever accepted at the grocery story, for a mortgage payment, or by the local bank.


Steve

Mate in the last couple of months there have been some discussion on this subject found this hope it helps also has the Warriors name and his answer to a thread on Bit Coins

"I don't think you will see many companies wanting to do this. It's an extremely high risk business formula. Here is why.

1. Merchant receives $10,000.00 in credit card payments for the month.
2. Merchant pays out $10,000.00 less fees in bitcoin.
3. A few months later let's say $5,000.00 of that gets charged back.
4. Merchant is out $5,000.00 plus the chargeback fees.

If it was just credit card to credit card type of transactions the amount charged back could be recovered from the subscriber. Since bitcoin transactions are final, the merchant has no way of recovering the bitcoin paid out unless the subscriber manually pays the merchant back.

Re's
Rob Whisonant "

Bit coins are bull crap if you are doing legal business with legal sites and expect not to lose your money via the feds like Silk Road.

So why use Bit coins when the reputable sites don't use them.

Maybe you should stop that underground thinking.

@Steve B: Your point #1 (not governmentally regulated) I actually see as a pro for buyer and seller as that way massive printing of currency can't devalue it as common practice for some fiat currencies we know.

Your points 2-4 sound all like benefits for the seller.

I do understand that point 2-4 can be seen as disadvantages for the other side (the buyer). But since I am a trustworthy seller that honors refund requests, not in this particular case. The honest seller can always refund BitCoin payments by sending back the received BitCoin amount to the buyer.


@Regional Warrior: I saw that post you copied here... please tell me if I am wrong, but that was about using BitCoin to pay affiliates. That's not what I am looking to do. I am interested to offer BitCoin as a payment option to the buyer, not as a payment option for me to pay our affiliates.

@Dano101: I am actually looking forward to the FED being shut down soon. Well, at least, I hope that illegal organization created in 1910 on Jekyll island will be gone soon. See:
BTW... many reputable and big companies already accept BitCoin as a payment option. Namecheap, Braintree (a company owned by PayPal), Amazon, 1-800-Flowers, Dell, Microsoft etc. See: Who Accepts Bitcoins As Payment? List of Companies

Bitcoin was meant for 3rd world countries and illegal activities or sites that do not offer refunds.

So if you want to peruse the Bitcoin taken. Then we know that something is very unique in your situation.

@Dano101: Have a read what the Washington Post wrote about BitCoin: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...about-bitcoin/

It was neither meant for 3rd World Countries only nor was it meant for illegal activities. It's simply a medium of exchange... like all other currencies. Would you consider e.g. PayPal, Dell Computers or Microsoft companies that only sell to 3rd world countries or (only) are involved in illegal activities?

Frank

Sorry mate had not seen that just copied thought would have been easier guess the search tab may be better

@Regional Warrior: No worries mate. Thanks for trying to help.

Hopefully, some people on the Warrior Forum do have experience with the "how to" part of the implementation. Same as many big and trusted companies, I would love to be able to offer my customers an even better service by offering this additional payment option to those that also see the many benefits of using BitCoin.

See Mycelium Gear or Stripe. Also, Woocommerce has some bitcoin extensions. Oh yea, SendOwl let's you accept Bitcoin as well.

I'm not familiar with this personally but supposedly BitMember has this functionality. I feel like Mycelium Gear or Stripe would too tho.

I'd start by looking at BitPay.com ....I don't deal with Bitcoins but seems to be a merchant focused site.

Also found a site offering a "how to accept bitcoin" manual - may be another service but could be good info anyway.

Merchant's Guide to Bitcoin | CardinalCommerce

Bitcoin is great. I got my first ever not long ago, cashed it in easily, and have around $300 sitting in a wallet ready to use if I need it. In fact, I kind of forgot it was there till I saw this thread, so I may cash it out too, lol.

If anyone feels they don't understand it well enough, watch these videos:

http://bitcoin.cbtnuggets.com/

They were made a while ago, but they're great.

Hi add2it,

Accepting Bitcoin payments is super easy using Bitpay. Bitpay is a payment processor, similar to Paypal, money goes straight into your bank account.

I think he should blow it off. You expressed your opinion and he replied. Why keep arguing it? He may have reasons of location (his or his customers) or products he sells that make BC a good option for him.

The OP had a specific question and it was answered with some professional services to solve the problem (BitPay).

BC isn't for me - but I'm in the US and have a lot of options. Not that easy for those in some other parts of the world.

Gotcha - and I agree with most of what you said about BC. I think I'm a bit touchy due to some recent threads where arguments seemed to take over. You don't usually do that and I may have been conclusion jumping...

I think location has a lot to do with interest in accepting Bitcoin and that's why I would try to answer a "how to" question rather than telling him "not to".

You have a valid point about location if the OP has no other alternatives ... although to me, Sydney, Australia would not seem to have that limitation at all.

You are right - "how to" information is probably more what the OP wanted to hear - but when he stated:

"Any other thoughts on accepting BitCoin for payments on an Internet Marketing related web site?"

To me, at least, he opened the door for opposing opinions about why an IMer might not want to use BitCoin payments. Shouldn't that be part of this conversation as well? I, for one, thought so, but maybe I'm wrong.

Steve

The easiest way to accept bitcoin payment is in-person , simply by getting your customer to send the the correct amount of bitcoin(BTC) to your digital wallet.

This can be done via many smartphone apps as the Bitcoin app by Andreas Schildbach, on Android. There are also options available on the Windows phone app store for users of that OS.

Some months ago Apple removed all bitcoin wallet apps from its App store . However on 2nd June the company rescinded this policy, once again paving the way for for wallet apps in iOS devices. These are already starting to appear, with BLOCKCHAIN, COINBASE, and other apps now available.

There are a lot of misconceptions going on here.

First off, there are many companies out there (Microsoft, for example) that already accept payment in Bitcoins. It is not an "underground" currency as some people have stated.

Also, Bitcoins should always be offered as an "alternative" payment method, not as your main one. Some people, for various reasons, do not want to pay with a credit card or do not have access to PayPal. Offering an alternative payment option to those people is a great way to increase your sales.

Once again, no one puts a gun to the buyers' heads and says "YOU NEED TO USE BITCOINS OR ELSE..." It's their choice. You're not treating your customers poorly by giving them an alternative payment method. People who already own Bitcoins already know how Bitcoins work and they know sales are final.

Finally, to answer the OP's question, there are Bitcoin payment processors out there (just use Google). Due to the nature of Bitcoins, recurring payments are not available though).

Cheers,

Nick

Do you believe you are missing sales by not offering it? I guess I don't understand messing with something so sketchy without good reason.

All with massive resources and legal teams.

After they sort it out maybe it will be worth considering.

For now I have absolutely no reason to even consider it.

Bitcoin may be the new money for the internet. But who gives a crap for now.

Can you buy a Pepsi or house with Bitcoin.

First, let me thank all of you that are trying to help answer my questions. I am looking into BitPay.com & Gear.Mycelium.com now.

Also, thanks to @Nick Evans... you are 100% right and really understood my OP spot on!

I can see we have two factions here...

a) People that support the interests of big banks & governments (against BitCoin) and that didn't properly read the initial couple of posts

b) open-minded people that see the benefits of additional payment options


Either way... let me summarize what I learned from you guys so far...

1. Due to the lack of a subscription option (BitMember doesn't seem ready yet and will only be for WordPress users), BitCoin doesn't seem to make sense to be used for monthly subscriptions (or any subscriptions for that fact), but it could be offered for e.g. one-time payments for a certain access time period.

2. BitPay.com seems to be (so far) the easiest service provider to add an automated BitCoin payment option (please let me know if you personally use a different option that you consider simple to use).

Stripe.com's BitCoin support is something I am looking forward to as well, sadly they so far only offer it to US account holders and not yet to Australian account holders.

3. My original thought that only offering BitCoin is a bad idea has been 100% confirmed... but offering it as an "additional" option is of great benefit for both parties (buyer and seller).

I would go so far as saying that if a web-site only offers BitCoin payments, it makes them appear shady... but if offered in conjunction with other payment options such as PayPal or a credit card merchant account (which is what the big, trusted companies do that already offer BitCoin as an option), it puts you in the league of big, trusted companies offering alternative options for progressive customers.

Over a year down the road, how has been for you. Just got into the industry. Super exciting, but scary at the same time

Obviously all the rants in this thread have never used Bitcoin or any other crypto coin.

OP when you get done sifting through all the silly anti-bitcoin rants check out coinbase.com. They work with the following companies and claim 47,000 other businesses to process merchant payments.

• mozilla.org
• wikipedia.org
• dish.com
• cheapair.com
• reddit.com
• reeds.com
• usaa.com
• bloomberg.com
• 1800flowers.com
• khanacademy.org
• fidelitycharitable.org
• timeinc.com
• mint.com
• overstock.com
• expedia.com

You can do research on the list above to learn more about how each business handles their own Bitcoin transactions by searching Google, example: siteverstock.com "bitcoin"

coinpayments.net is a good option but if you're looking for something that is POS then I'm not sure.

Edit: Just realized I commented in this thread already before but didn't yet mention coinpayments.net

As a merchant you might as well accept Bitcoin. It's free to accept it and easy to cash in to regular money.

WooCommerce has a free Bitcoin gateway which you can easily integrate into your site if you do decide to accept Bitcoin. I've used this one in the past https://wordpress.org/plugins/bitcoi...r-woocommerce/ .

Even though its an old thread, its interesting to read the posts in light of all that bitcoin has done the last couple years!

More reason today to offer it as an option. Its also in a massive bubble, so have fun speculating

When I hear people refer to Bitcoin or cryptocurrency as a fad, or assign some evil motive to the crypto coin users, it makes me chuckle just a little. I'm reminded of all those folks that used to say the Internet was just a fad, that in a couple of years people wouldn't even remember what email was, and you'd have to be a damned fool to enter your credit card into some ecommerce website, especially one named after a river in South America.

By the way, whatever happened to that dodgy fly-by-night internet ecommerce business, you know the one that called itself "Amazon"?

What those simple folks don't yet realize is that crypto currencies are based on a revolutionary new technology that is likely to bring the same type of advance in human society as the printing press, electricity, and the Internet itself. That new technology is called Blockchain technology.

Blockchain technology will make things that were unimaginable before it's existance possible and relatively easy to achieve. Bitcoin and other crypto currencies are just one of millions of possible inventions, based on blockchain technology, that we can expect to fundamentally transform society in ways most people aren't yet capable of imagining.

We haven't even scratched the surface of what this new technology is able to do, the first few applications like Bitcoins have masses of people completely dumbfounded. They still cannot believe that you can safely and reliably make payment transactions with people they will never meet, without any 3rd party payment processor, or banking systems, or government issued fiat currency involved. It's like the ground they stand on has fallen out from under their feet.

Trying to explain blockchain technology to most people today is like trying to convince common folk to take a ride in a horseless carriage (automobile) back 110 years ago. Or to take a ride in an airplane 90 years ago. Back then they would have probably looked at you like you were some kind of crazy person. Just image telling someone that you wanted to send an overnight letter across the country to a business person back in 1970, they would have immediately written you off as a complete nut job, yet, only one year later it was a reality. 10 years later you could get a letter across country in a matter of a couple of minutes via Fax, just a few years later it could be sent in seconds. and now we can collaborate and watch a letter being crafted in real time, seeing it's content before it's even finished.

One of the most amazing things about blockchain technology is that it uses collective distrust to convert risk into extreme reliability. It seems almost magical in the same way that the Internet would have seemed like magic to people a few decades ago.

Blockchain technology is here, it's not going to go away, people might as well embrace it and ride this magically wave of amazing new technology.

Have you hugged your blockchain today?

Don Burk

At gunpoint?