Not planned Stripe Bitcoin

[Alpha1]

Please implement Stripe Bitcoin payments into XF2. Bitcoin is getting more popularity and it is really nice to have this.

The instructions are here:
https://stripe.com/docs/sources/bitcoin

 

[Robust]

The instructions are here:
https://stripe.com/docs/sources/bitcoin

Stripe Bitcoin only works for US merchants. This alienates a large amount of people.

I had a chat with the Stripe developers on IRC, they mentioned that Stripe Bitcoin is in the works for other countries but kinda refrained from giving any dates. They announced it would come to the UK back in 2016, so I wouldn't be too optimistic on that coming to the rest of Europe and other countries Stripe supports anytime soon.

Hence, it might be a better idea to implement Bitpay and/or Coinbase support, instead of Stripe Bitcoin.

 

[Jake B.]

Doesn't stripe btc just add money to your account like any other payment? I feel like that would defeat the purpose, might be better to have support for coin base or something

 

[Alpha1]

BitPay does the same as stripe. It allows your members to pay in bitcoin while it turns it into money.
How is coinbase different?

Hence, it might be a better idea to implement Bitpay and/or Coinbase support, instead of Stripe Bitcoin.

I regularly get emails from Bitpay that someone tried to pay more way than my limit of 1k. I find this suspicious because I even got frequent notifications when bitcoin was very rarely used.
To raise their limit I need to get certified translated versions of all documentation. Which is expensive to do.

 

[Jake B.]

How is coinbase different?

From my understanding (granted, I haven't used their API for anything) coinbase will add the actual BTC (or LTC or whatever other Cryptocurrency they support) to your wallet since, haven't used BitPay for anything so I'm not sure what they do honestly.

It does seem odd that Stripe only supports US for bitcoin payments. Do you know if there is any particular reason for that as I wouldn't have thought that the country would be relevant when it comes to Cryptocurrencies. Might have to do with calculating exchange rates with other currencies?

 

[Robust]

It does seem odd that Stripe only supports US for bitcoin payments. Do you know if there is any particular reason for that as I wouldn't have thought that the country would be relevant when it comes to Cryptocurrencies. Might have to do with calculating exchange rates with other currencies?

Asked a Stripe developer:

<koopajah> no plans for this for now but we're looking into it
<koopajah> legal barrier I think, not sure

I wouldn't expect it anytime soon.

Coinbase, last I used the merchant functionality, will deposit the BTC into your wallet. Perhaps they've allowed auto-convert to USD/GBP/EUR/etc. since, not sure. You could always just make an API call to auto-sell the BTC into regular currencies, which are stored in the currency's wallet.

Bitpay will convert it straight to a regular currency by default. I believe they have since updated it to allow the ability to store the BTC in a wallet, similar to Coinbase.

Coinbase and Bitpay both offer the same core features. They just started on the opposite ends. Bitpay is more used by merchants, Coinbase is more by traders/consumers.

 

[Robust]

I regularly get emails from Bitpay that someone tried to pay more way than my limit of 1k. I find this suspicious because I even got frequent notifications when bitcoin was very rarely used.
To raise their limit I need to get certified translated versions of all documentation. Which is expensive to do.

Bitpay is used by some very large companies. It's a pretty legit company and the standard for online Bitcoin payments via a gateway. Not sure what happened in your specific case.

I found Bitpay to be lighter on the regulation, when compared to Coinbase.

 

[Jake B.]

FWIW: https://stripe.com/blog/ending-bitcoin-support

 

[Mike]

Given that they're ending Bitcoin support and this suggestion is specifically relating to that, it makes sense to close the suggestion. (Other providers may support various cryptocurrencies, though I think that'd be best in a separate suggestion.)

 

[Robust]

FWIW: https://stripe.com/blog/ending-bitcoin-support

Yeah, I saw their tweet right after they posted it. Really not surprised, tbh.

Bitcoin is completely unsuitable for non-large payments now. Actually, it's not suitable for payments *at all* anymore. The fees are too high, the confirmation times are stupid, and it's simply not suitable for typical payment amounts to forums.

I'd say technologies like IOTA or RaiBlocks (nano) might be suitable for actual crypto payments in the future, but they're still in their infancy. Alternatively, Lightning Network might make Bitcoin suitable for payments, again. But a (small) fee remains applicable to payments, whilst IOTA/nano would have no fee and instant confirmations. I believe Lightning is meant to have a similar premise, small fees and near-instant confirms depending on the implementation (confirms when the channel is closed), and it gives you the advantage of using Bitcoin vs. an altcoin.

There's some promise with cryptos, but most solutions either suck/are not sustainable, or are still in their infancy.

 

[Alpha1]

Hopefully they will soon start supporting Bitcoin Cash or one of the cryptocurrencies they mentioned.

 

[51463]

there was a huge attack against bitcoin, i wouldn't be surprised if they add bitcoin again in the future, not a big fan of bitcoin cash but really if you're selling products you should accept any type of crypto as long as you can change it quickly to dollars
who needs these 3rd parties when you can accept it directly!

 

[Alpha1]

Despite this, we remain very optimistic about cryptocurrencies overall. There are a lot of efforts that we view as promising and that we can certainly imagine enabling support for in the future. We’re interested in what’s happening with Lightning and other proposals to enable faster payments. OmiseGO is an ambitious and clever proposal; more broadly, Ethereum continues to spawn many high-potential projects. We may add support for Stellar (to which we provided seed funding) if substantive use continues to grow. It’s possible that Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, or another Bitcoin variant, will find a way to achieve significant popularity while keeping settlement times and transaction fees very low. Bitcoin itself may become viable for payments again in the future. And, of course, there’ll be more ideas and technologies in the years ahead.

https://stripe.com/blog

 

[Robust]

there was a huge attack against bitcoin, i wouldn't be surprised if they add bitcoin again in the future, not a big fan of bitcoin cash but really if you're selling products you should accept any type of crypto as long as you can change it quickly to dollars
who needs these 3rd parties when you can accept it directly!

These 3rd parties take a lot of risk and liability off your hands. For one, they guarantee liquidity by converting to fiat real-time. But beyond those services, cryptocurrency security is hard, and compromised wallets, small mistakes, malware, [...], can all result in you losing access to your wallet and all the cryptocurrency it contains. All transactions are irreversible, so you don't have any legal remedies to reverse transactions, things we take for granted.

Accepting cryptocurrency in a large project without the use of a provider such as Stripe, Bitpay, Coinbase or the various other trusted ones is very risky. I'd rather accept fiat without a provider than crypto without a provider.

With Stripe's decision, it isn't an attack. Fees were becoming ridiculous and volatility is insane. Bitcoin went from $1k to $20k and back down to $7k in the period of a mere 6 months. I imagine the risk factor was getting high for Stripe and profitability was low.

 

[51463]

hello

nanocode just make Bitcoin add-on

Coinbase Commerce Integration

This Coinbase Commerce integration allows you to accept cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash. Give your users more payment method choice, and protect yourself from fraud and chargebacks, by accepting...

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