Don't rush ahead and get yourself rejected from all the payment options
before you've had time to see if there's a better approach. I suggest
you wait before contacting any more payment processors. You may get
ideas from things other users come up with and try.
Just some random incomplete ideas: There may be a way to position it as
an intermediate credit for micropayments for some virtual good or
something. Or maybe if the payments are only in one direction. If you
only buy bitcoins, then you're only sending money out not taking
people's money, that would still be useful to peg the currency. That
might be payment for computer time.
Credit card is only one way. Don't even talk about the idea of
returning money to customer's credit cards. Credit card companies hate
that.
In any case, any payment processor is going to expect you to be selling
something real.
Do you have electronic transfer or paper cheque in your country? (even
if only within Europe)
Exchange options
Private email with Martti Malmi (sirius-m) · 4 messages · from 4 February 2010 · with Satoshi Nakamoto, mmalmi@cc.hut.fi
Read in Satoshi Mail Archive source
Liberty Reserve sounds good. I could first make a service that only
accepts LR, and add more options later. The weakness is that buying LR
is an extra step of inconvenience when the customer just wants to get
Bitcoins. But maybe I don't have too much choice here.
Do you have electronic transfer or paper cheque in your country? (even if only within Europe)
Yes, electronic bank transfer is available. During 2010 most European
countries will become a part of SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area),
which means that all payments within Europe are to be considered
domestic. Banks will have to apply the same fees and standards to all
domestic transfers, so they'll probably all be free of charge and
complete in one bank day. For international transfers there's the
SWIFT/IBAN system, which usually costs some extra.
A longer term project for my exchange service would be to see what
kinds of integration options the banks have to offer. Bank transfers
would reach nearly as many customers as credit cards do.
Maybe the current difficulty of buying LR is already the limit of how
easy it can get in that direction.
Every conventional payment method has refutability as their way to cope
with their lack of passwords and crypto. The system is wide open to
copying plaintext credit card numbers and account numbers, and they deal
with it by reversing the transaction after the fact. The system works
for physical goods that have to be delivered somewhere, and services
which can't be resold. It's a problem when it interfaces with precious
metals and currency conversion.
The first step of being easy in one direction, bitcoin->LR or anything
of established value, goes a long way. Even those who don't use the
conversion still benefit from knowing that they could. Trading bitcoin
becomes an easier way to trade the ability to claim LR, similar to how
paper money was once the right to claim gold. Nobody has to ever
actually claim the LR to get the benefit of having the option that they
could if they wanted to.
A lot of times you just need a minuscule amount of online currency. The
hassle of buying the other online currencies is too much for buying a
small amount. The ease of getting a small amount of bitcoin may help
bootstrap an ecosystem of sellers of micropayment sized online goods
selling to that market. If the sellers can get LR for bitcoins, they're
happy, and that may be subsidized at first by investors who want to buy
bc in large lots.
The main thing holding online currencies back is the lack of an easy way
to get a small amount of currency. Bitcoin opens that up. It'll be the
only online currency that's both easy to cash out and easy to get a
small amount. It'll just be the usual harder difficulty to buy a large
amount.
mmalmi@cc.hut.fi wrote:Liberty Reserve sounds good. I could first make a service that only accepts LR, and add more options later. The weakness is that buying LR is an extra step of inconvenience when the customer just wants to get Bitcoins. But maybe I don't have too much choice here. > Do you have electronic transfer or paper cheque in your country? (even > if only within Europe) Yes, electronic bank transfer is available. During 2010 most European countries will become a part of SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area), which means that all payments within Europe are to be considered domestic. Banks will have to apply the same fees and standards to all domestic transfers, so they'll probably all be free of charge and complete in one bank day. For international transfers there's the SWIFT/IBAN system, which usually costs some extra. A longer term project for my exchange service would be to see what kinds of integration options the banks have to offer. Bank transfers would reach nearly as many customers as credit cards do.
I'm moving in the direction of making transactions automated only when
the customer buys coins with SMS payment provided by ZayPay. Pecunix
is the only reliable and practical enough e-currency that I'd store my
reserves in, but the exchange fees are quite high (about 5%).
When I'm buying coins, my recommended payment method would be IBAN
transfer. I could also say "contact us if you want to buy/sell with
any other payment option" and handle each order separately. I could
manually accept single orders with even PayPal, as long as I don't
store my money there and the customer pays the fees.