Bitcoin Debit card

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Pitbully

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Nov 29, 2011
Messages
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https://xapo.com/in/campaign/debit/

Anyone see this yet? Be pretty cool if they actually bring it to the market. Checking the site out I don't see any "Visa" or "Mastercard" logos anywhere yet, so I'm guessing its still in the planning stages, but it would be nice if it came to be. Just one more step for bitcoins becoming mainstream...
 
Pitbully said:
https://xapo.com/in/campaign/debit/

Anyone see this yet? Be pretty cool if they actually bring it to the market. Checking the site out I don't see any "Visa" or "Mastercard" logos anywhere yet, so I'm guessing its still in the planning stages, but it would be nice if it came to be. Just one more step for bitcoins becoming mainstream...
Click to expand...

I'm a business owner. Why would I want to accept this? I already pay a fee to accept Visa/MC/Amex/Disc. Why do I need to take yet another card that will probably charge me ~2%?

This is a product that will probably never come to market full scale. There has to be a reason (more than just for the betterment of BTC in general) for merchants to go through the trouble of purchasing a terminal and accepting yet another card with a fee.

Edit:
Thinking about this a bit more, it would be good for me (merchant) if the BTC didn't have to go through xapo's hands at all. That way, as soon as a card is swiped, the BTC is deposited directly into my BTC wallet. That gives me quicker deposits times than using a traditional merchant service and it will remove the possibility of charge backs. Of course, if Xapo is going to charge a transaction fee like all other merchants, then the BTC is going to have to go through them somehow so that they can take their cut...
 
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I love bitcoin -- big supporter and miner (at least alt-coins now)

but even I have to wonder about the block time and transaction speed. Point of sale in a retail world has to be truly instant.

Confirmation of bitcoin takes a bit of time... too long for any retail transaction. Litecoin or Worldcoin ftw!

Edit: at work and can't click on the link... but I'm guessing it's a 3rd party that actually holds your bitcoins and had a system on hand to pay out cash to retailers account and automatically converts any bitcoins you send them (for a fee of course) The entire system would have to be pre-paid basically.

I'd be interested in how they would work out any fluctuations in BTC value. I send 1 BTC to the debit card company, do they hold onto it until I make a transaction? or do they convert it on the spot and then the dollars are added into my account (in essence freezing their value)
 
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biggen said:
I'm a business owner. Why would I want to accept this? I already pay a fee to accept Visa/MC/Amex/Disc. Why do I need to take yet another card that will probably charge me ~2%?

This is a product that will probably never come to market full scale. There has to be a reason (more than just for the betterment of BTC in general) for merchants to go through the trouble of purchasing a terminal and accepting yet another card with a fee.

Edit:
Thinking about this a bit more, it would be good for me (merchant) if the BTC didn't have to go through xapo's hands at all. That way, as soon as a card is swiped, the BTC is deposited directly into my BTC wallet. That gives me quicker deposits times than using a traditional merchant service and it will remove the possibility of charge backs. Of course, if Xapo is going to charge a transaction fee like all other merchants, then the BTC is going to have to go through them somehow so that they can take their cut...
Click to expand...
I think because the objective of cryptocurrency is that it won't be tied down by the fees from big banks. At least, that's the main statement lots of people make. Since when you transfer money/currency it's all just 1's and 0's, there's no one that physically moves piles of cash, so there's really no work overhead, and no real reason to impose a service fee for this sort of thing. Or at least, not at the same scale as what major financial institutions do. But who knows how all of this is going to turn out. I was against bitcoin initially because of the major commodity-perspective most people used it for, but cryptocurrency in general, I support it in principle. It just has a lot of tough times to plow through before it gets main stream.
 
the price of btc is not stable enough for transactions on that scale just think someone could buy 15 gallons of gas in thee morning then by evening the price of btc drops and the .14 btc becomes worth 40 instead of 60. This is a really big issue online and b&m stores need to address before they want to adopt digital currency. When i sell a room at my motel i cant take the risk that the money i took for your room depreciates in value when i can pick a more stable currency to receive.
 
check out coinkite.com

Their solution is streamlined and ready to be launched by june/july.

Its a great idea for merchants to accept because fee's are much lower than credit cards, and you dont have the risk of chargebacks :)
 
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