
Stripe: Bitcoin - sunils34
https://stripe.com/bitcoin
======
adriancooney
What a fantastic product page. After less that 30 seconds, I knew exactly what
Stripe was doing with Bitcoin, how to use the new feature and integrate it.

This is great news for Bitcoin. If all it takes is one extra line of code for
online retailers to start accepting the currency, widespread adoption could
sky rocket. That's always been Bitcoin's crutch, simple integration. Others
like Coinbase and Bitpay have made it much easier to accept Bitcoin, but
usually more services are required to accept other forms of payment. This
simple catch-all solution is a game-changer. Congratulations Stripe.

~~~
patrickaljord
I think the crutch now is not that it's hard to acquire bitcoins (thanks to
coinbase and friends) or pay with bitcoin (thanks to stripe and friends), no,
the only crutch is why should I buy bitcoins with my dollars when I can just
pay with my dollars directly?

It can be useful for people who either don't have access to credit cards but
have access to bitcoins, people who already have a lot of bitcoins and curious
tech people.

~~~
deweller
> should I buy bitcoins with my dollars when I can just pay with my dollars
> directly?

Cheaper fees (0.5% vs 2.9%) can be potentially passed on to consumers.

And anonymity.

~~~
wyldfire
bitcoin's not really that anonymous. Sure, the ledger doesn't contain
identities, but it's not extremely difficult for the mapping between addresses
and identities to "leak" and once they do, it's anything but anonymous.

~~~
ikeboy
Can you tell us who hacked BTER or Bitstamp then? Since it's so easy to
deanonymize people, you know.

Just look at the addresses the stolen bitcoins were sent to.

~~~
Retra
Sounds to me like you just explained why you shouldn't want anonymity in your
transaction.

~~~
ikeboy
There are benefits to anonymity, which arguably outweigh disadvantages.

I was just pointing out that bitcoin _is_ anonymous when used by someone with
a brain. (I.e not Ross Ulbricht, who apparently sent money to an assassin from
his personal wallet, without using a mixer.)

~~~
Retra
I understand that there are benefits to anonymity, but I don't think anonymous
transactions are really a priority at this time, except for people doing
illegal business. I certainly don't want politicians to be able to receive
anonymous funding.

It's different with something like speech, where we have a rational principle
that says "people can speak as a general proxy for hypothetical positions."
But you can't make hypothetical purchases, and you can't represent a general
population with anonymous purchases. So anonymous purchases don't have a
social basis for the same protections.

~~~
ikeboy
But what about when someone wants to donate to wikileaks, which supports free
speech (say), but they don't want governments to know that?

People need money to speak freely (especially when they are persecuted for
it), and those donations should be anonymous.

~~~
Retra
People need free speech to speak freely. Your Wikileaks example is cherry-
picking: it is not illegal to donate to Wikileaks. It might be illegal to
donate to a drug cartel, or somebody like ISIS. Or to that police officer who
wanted to give you a ticket. Or that government agent deciding who to give a
big contract to.

I think think of far more cases where anonymous transactions are harmful than
I can where they are beneficial.

~~~
ikeboy
It's not illegal per se to donate to wikileaks, but you may be put on a list
somewhere.

Do you think all free speech should be only with identified speakers? How
would you feel if your entire spending history was in the public domain?

In most of your examples, you can easily pay with cash, which is anonymous.

~~~
Retra
No, I don't think all free speech should be with identity. I would anticipate
that it is hard to have free speech under such conditions.

I wouldn't care if my spending history were public, but that's obviously not
relevant. I don't believe spending should be anonymous. I don't believe people
should be allowed to make any purchase they desire without penalty. I do
believe people should be able to speak without penalty, as people are better
able to ignore bad words than they are bad money. Money corrupts people far
more effectively and quickly than speech.

> _It 's not illegal per se to donate to wikileaks, but you may be put on a
> list somewhere._

So? You're already on a list somewhere. Are you arguing that you have a right
not to be on lists, and that this has anything to do with currency?

> _In most of your examples, you can easily pay with cash, which is
> anonymous._

No, not "easily." You have to go to a bank and sit in front of their cameras
while they hand you money. That's not the same as anonymous internet
transactions. And the person you are giving money to will see you hand it to
them, unless you jump through some hoops. And jumping through hoops is shady
when you're doing something illegal. And someone cannot steal your cash
without being physically present, and thus requiring knowledge of your
location and opportunity to leave a trail of evidence.

I mean, if it were so easy to pay cash, what value does bitcoin even bring to
the table? Why are all these bitcoin advocates not just using cash, if they
are so similar?

------
lisa_henderson
The Bitcoin community might want to take a deep breath and recognize where
Bitcoin has the most real-world use. The idea that my mom will someday use
Bitcoin to buy books online is about as realistic as the belief that, any
minute now, youngsters will realize that the daily newspaper is better read in
paper form, because of the texture and experience and the anonymity of paper.
For that matter, I am a computer programmer, and I love to play with new
technologies, and I'm utterly unable to imagine why I'd ever want to pay with
anything with Bitcoin.

There are a large number of people living in China who would like to get
around the nation's currency controls. There are a large number of people
living in Russia that want to move money without being tracked. There are a
large number of people living in Latin America who want to avoid taxes in
their own countries. This is what drives the use of Bitcoin. The only large
scale need for Bitcoin is criminal activity, in China, Russia, Latin America
and elsewhere.

Currency regulated by the government is a classic "good enough" product. It
might lack some features that would be nice, but 99% of the public doesn't
seem to care. Rather, they want more money, but they don't want to change
money. If they had real doubts about the currency, they would dump it in
exchange for real goods. But instead, most people work hard to acquire more
money, and they show no real concern with the standard proxies for currency
(credit cards, checks, etc).

~~~
venaoy
The world's simplest reasons why you might pay something using bitcoins is
simply when this is the only way, or cheapest way, or safest way to make a
transaction.

Example #1: some merchants are hit really hard with fraud, such as intangible
goods paid by international credit card transactions. So hard that they
decided to stop selling internationally. These merchants discover that Bitcoin
re-enables them to sell internationally because Bitcoin completely solves the
fraud problem for them (since transactions are irreversible). In that case, as
an international customer of such a merchant, paying in Bitcoin is your only
option.

Example #2: some merchants offer discounts when paying in Bitcoin (because
they don't incur credit card fees). So it is in your interest to pay in
Bitcoin: you don't have to pay the fees from exchanging coins for fiat, and
you don't have to pay the indirect credit card fees that the merchant would
make you cover (via the absence of a discount).

Example #3: as Bicoin's adoption grows, more and more people end up having
bitcoins in their hands, like your nephew giving you $50 worth of coins for
Christmas. What's the easiest for you to use them? Setting up an account at an
exchange (and incurring the associated hassles and fees when selling), or just
spending them directly? Of course in this case you would want to spend them
directly.

Example #4: say you are travelling out of town and paying for a meal in a
restaurant that you suspect might be skimming credit cards... do you pay using
a credit card or bitcoins? Using Bitcoin here would be much safer. It has all
the advantages of credit cards (and more) without the inconvenience and danger
of handling cash (losing it, getting robbed, no ability to "back up" cash,
etc). Hardware bitcoin wallets have especially an insane opportunity to
innovate in this space (wrt. security and ease of use).

~~~
StavrosK
It took me no less than one hour to pay for a flight the other day, because of
various cc-related problems, not the least of which being the train wreck that
is Verified by Visa. I so, so wished for a Bitcoin option...

~~~
scrollaway
I spent the past three days trying to buy a conference ticket. My card
wouldn't get accepted, my bank was being incompetent and unhelpful, claiming
they weren't seeing any charges pop up.

I didn't even think of it until your post, yet I was still involved in this
not five hours ago. When you look back, it's surprising the amount of
artificial shit we have to sift through with CCs.

------
mrb
Stripe's Terms of Service reveal that they use Coinbase in the backend to
transact and exchange the bitcoins:
[https://stripe.com/bitcoin/terms](https://stripe.com/bitcoin/terms) If you
are a small merchant planning to do less than $1-2 million dollars in sales,
you might still prefer using Coinbase directly instead of Stripe though,
because Coinbase waives all fees until the first $1 million dollars (then it's
1%), but Stripe charges a constant 0.5% fee.

There is a tad more info from
[https://twitter.com/stripe](https://twitter.com/stripe) :

 _" Our Bitcoin support is now fully live:
[https://stripe.com/bitcoin](https://stripe.com/bitcoin) ."_

 _" It's fully-integrated with the rest of Stripe: same APIs, same reporting,
same dashboard. (Just like our Alipay support.)"_

 _" While testing our Bitcoin support, we had people from 60 different
countries use it to pay. (Howdy, Guatemala, Algeria, Rwanda, Cambodia!)"_

 _" Particular thanks to @Namecheap, @Tarsnap, @HandUp, and @Grooveshark for
their feedback as we developed this."_

 _" And as for [https://stripe.com/bitcoin](https://stripe.com/bitcoin) itself
-- this is our first, but hopefully not last, page to feature an animated
Vim."_

For the record, Stripe's Bitcoin support has been in beta since March 2014.
Tarsnap were the first users:
[http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2014-03-27-tarsnap-
bitcoin.h...](http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2014-03-27-tarsnap-bitcoin.html)

Edit: @ThrustVectoring: it does not take 5 weeks of a developer's time to
integrate with Coinbase, especially for the "small" merchants (<$1-2M in
sales) that my comment was written for. But I agree the appeal of simplicity
if you already take Stripe is there :)

~~~
vertex-four
You can integrate bitcoin support into Stripe Checkout with just a few lines
of code - one attribute on the client, and 2-3 lines of extra code to create
your Charge object in a different way on the server, at which point you
process it in almost exactly the same way as a card payment (potentially minus
some UI details in confirmation messages, etc).

Integrating Coinbase involves writing your own "payment" abstraction in place
of being able to use Stripe's all the way through your application, then
implementing both Stripe and Coinbase on top of that. While this might be good
in the long run (so you can switch off of Stripe easily), it's not so good for
smaller shops/services which don't need that complexity yet.

~~~
gcr
Why is the choice to accept bitcoins client-side? If I want to force a payment
in bitcoins, I can add the attribute myself.

Some businesses have legal ramifications for accepting bitcoin or not, even if
it's through Stripe. Is there a flag in your Stripe merchant account on
Stripe's server to refuse bitcoins?

~~~
vertex-four
> Why is the choice to accept bitcoins client-side? If I want to force a
> payment in bitcoins, I can add the attribute myself.

No, that's not the case. The choice to display the UI for accepting bitcoins
is client-side. Handling the results of that UI still has to be done specially
on the server, through the creation of a Charge in a different way.

------
j42
Honestly, this may be what it takes to see more mainstream consumer adoption.

A lot of the apps with high levels of penetration in this generalized
demographic seem to use Stripe--if it's truly a frictionless integration, it
will be really interesting to see the market's response.

Coinbase & exchange API's were the first step. Single-script hosted payment
processing with a UI focus (accessible to tech and grassroots e-commerce
alike) seems to be the next.

And to the Stripe team--Thank you!

I've used many merchant processors, from 2004 until now. Along with Braintree
you paved the way for this future in MP, and overall created a brilliantly
engineered system that's a pleasure to work with.

~~~
JohnTHaller
The bigger problem with mainstream consumer adoption is the fact that
mainstream consumers don't have any bitcoins to spend.

Then there's the fact that you have to use an exchange to buy the coins in the
first place and... let's just say bitcoin exchanges aren't exactly known as
secure financial institutions. It seems a large bitcoin exchange is hacked and
shuts down just about weekly:

Just hours ago: Cavritex, Canada's largest bitcoin exchange, announced that it
was hacked and will shut down

4 days ago: BTER of China was hacked and lost $1.75m

Last week: Exco.in was hacked, apparently lost all customer-held coins, and
shut down

Last week: Hong Kong's MyCoin died and was apparently a ponzi scheme that had
$387

And that's not even counting the abrupt closures of other exchanges telling
users to get their funds out ASAP or lose them.

~~~
venaoy
> you have to use an exchange to buy the coins

No you don't. You can sell stuff on Craigslist for bitcoins. You can mine. You
can buy coins in person from a friend/from localbitcoins. You can receive
remittance from your oversea family in bitcoins. You can buy them from a
Bitcoin ATM. Etc. There are tons of ways to acquire bitcoins without "having"
to use an exchange.

~~~
tonyhb
Shameless plug, you can also get paid with bitcoins via
[https://www.incoin.io/](https://www.incoin.io/). We need more of this. I'd be
happy to see another proper payroll company with the option to pay via
bitcoin.

------
manuelflara
I absolutely love the little animated step by step process shown of how it
works. Is this done with an open source library?

~~~
benjamindc
I'm just using a tiny lib that makes things easier:
[https://github.com/bendc/animate](https://github.com/bendc/animate) Other
than that, it's just vanilla js/css.

~~~
sergiotapia
I just want to say that you're one of my favorite designers out there and I
enjoy your various posts out there on the web. Thanks so much for sharing your
talent for us developers to peek inside!

~~~
benjamindc
Thank you, means a lot :)

------
chris_va
Question for Stripe folks.

 _At creation, Stripe guarantees an exchange rate that is usable for 10
minutes. If the customer sends bitcoin to the receiver after the 10 minutes
have expired, we’ll still process the transaction but the conversion amount
will no longer be guaranteed._

Say I am a merchant, and I want to make $10 on my transaction.

With a 0.5% fee:

\- Without BTC, I charge $10.05 to the user, you take 5 cents, and I am left
with $10.

\- With BTC, I charge $10.05 to stripe, which gets converted to BTC at some
exchange rate, and gets charged to the user. Does Stripe guarantee me $10? Or
am I subject to the fluctuations of Stripe's exchange rate (say the user takes
20 minutes to finish the transaction)? Is there any way to _guarantee_ that I
get paid $10 or the transaction fails?

~~~
gigq
I don't know the answer to this but given the user is the one who didn't
complete the transaction in 10 minutes they are probably held responsible. I
would guess if it was underpaid they would have to send more to the address
(the same as if they only paid half the bill). If it's overpaid they probably
send the overpaid amount back as a refund to the address it was sent from (or
keep it).

~~~
joshstrange
It would be interesting to see if you could "lock in" a BTC price and then
wait 9 minutes to see if BTC goes up or down (meaning you are over/under
paying) then decide if you still want to buy. I'd think there would be
protections against something like this though.

------
lbotos
Any idea how stripe is handling confirmations? (I'm a bitcoin newbie, but I
know that consensus took a minute or so the last time I had done anything with
BTC.) Has that changed?

~~~
cca
(Christian from Stripe here.) We credit USD to our user's account when we see
a transaction that we believe will become confirmed. The time-delay between
when the customer pushes the transaction and when we notify our users is
typically less than 15 seconds and almost always less than 60 seconds.

~~~
sah88
What happens if it does not get confirmed. Do you debit the account by an
equivalent amount or eat it?

~~~
cca
It's a good question. We want Bitcoin acceptance to be straightforward for our
users, so we deal with a failed confirmation on our side. We do not debit the
user.

~~~
runeks
Hence the 0.5% fee. :)

I suspect this is the reason Bitpay is able to waive fees completely: they _do
not_ take responsibility for unconfirmed transactions.

> _Note: Regardless of the transaction speed settings, a fully paid invoice is
> credited to your merchant account after the transaction has accrued six
> confirmations._ [1]

[1] [https://support.bitpay.com/hc/en-
us/articles/202943915-What-...](https://support.bitpay.com/hc/en-
us/articles/202943915-What-is-Transaction-Speed-)

------
aakilfernandes
> Stripe charges just 0.5% per successful Bitcoin transaction. There are no
> other fees.

Beautiful

~~~
jszymborski
Wait, am I missing something or does coinbase not do this for free... or do
they nab you some other way

~~~
yincrash
Coinbase charges a BTC <-> USD fee of 1%. Stripe is essentially charging for
the same exchange service, but 0.5% instead.

"Avoid exchange rate hassles—specify amounts in USD and we’ll send you
dollars. Stripe charges just 0.5% per successful Bitcoin transaction."

------
RemoteWorker
I find it hilarious how Bitcoin haters (like the ones we have here on HN) say
it's never going to work, but then they spend hours every day trying to talk
people out of using it.

~~~
lmm
The value of these things is a Keynesian beauty contest. If enough people
decide that Bitcoin is a valid currency then it is a valid currency (just like
baseball cards).

I think that would be bad for society. Any new value in the bitcoin ecosystem
increases the value held by the early adopters - who are mostly drug dealers
or other criminals, and the rest are the miners who enabled them. (bitcoin
does have some advantages for some legitimate use cases, but the biggest
advantages were for the criminal use cases).

~~~
venaoy
> who are mostly drug dealers or other criminals

This is false. And you have no source to prove it. I know a lot of early
adopters through various channels. They are geeks, crypto nerds, cypherpunks.
Think guys like Hal Finney, Wei Dai, etc. Nice guys who like to explore new
ideas.

Maybe you are just upset that you "missed the boat" on bitcoin or something.
But you've got to stop believing every Bitcoin user is a criminal.

------
thucydides
Who wants to use this most?

Porn companies. Their chargeback rates are obscenely high. And Bitcoins can't
be "clawed back," as grubles put it.

ed: "wants to" instead of "will"

~~~
undefined0
"Their chargeback rates are obscenely high". I've always understood that porn
companies have difficulty finding a friendly payment processor, but I've never
heard that they recieve a high chargeback rate before. Do you know why that
is? What do users gain from chargebacking porn websites over chargebacking
dropbox, for example?

~~~
sanswork
Their partner sees "XYZ.com" on the bill and goes to look it up. "Why are you
buying porn?" "Oh that wasn't me! Someone must have stolen our card" and they
submit a chargeback.

~~~
wpietri
I'm sure regret is also a part of it as well. "Why did I spend that money?"
And of course, outright theft of services, where they watch/download whatever
it is they're interested in and then cancel the charge.

------
roasbeef
Disappointed to see that they don't appear any PaymentProtocol[1] integration.

[1]
[https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0070.mediawi...](https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0070.mediawiki)

~~~
cca
(I work at Stripe.) We love the PaymentProtocol, and we have an integration
internally. Because the protocol is fairly new, we want to gauge demand from
our users before exposing the extra infrastructure.

------
UXDork
Okay, Stripe. Can I accept bitcoins and automatically convert them to USD? I
need an instant conversion back to USD after the transaction so I don't lose
money due to volatility. Does stripe let merchants auto-convert their Bitcoin
payments to USD? This would solve the problem entirely and I'd be happy to
pass the extra savings on to customers.

I could probably give about a 6% discount because I wouldn't take profit from
the transaction savings.

In fact, given the fee is .05% of the transaction, this could be the first
service to ever enable micropayments. Perfect for a lot of internet/new
technology services. The key is to convert the customer's USD to bitcoin
instantly, pay with bitcoin, and convert the received bitcoin back to USD
instantly again.

~~~
lachyg
(I work at Stripe)

Correct! You set your price in USD, we present the amount in bitcoins to your
customer, and guarantee you the price you set in USD.

------
Animats
_" Avoid exchange rate hassles—specify amounts in USD and we’ll send you
dollars."_ Looks like another Coinbase reseller. Coinbase has a merchant
program. They guarantee their buy price of Bitcoin for a minute or two, to
cover the volatility between when the web site accepts the Bitcoins and
Coinbase dumps them on an exchange. During periods of high volatility, this
service is sometimes suspended.

Many shopping cart programs already accept Bitcoins and convert them through
Coinbase. Few merchants accept Bitcoins and accept the conversion risk
themselves. This kind of service has been available for the last year. It's
used a little, but not much.

------
borski
I'm assuming this doesn't work for recurring payments?

~~~
krithix
(I work for Stripe.) That's correct. Stripe does not currently support
recurring or repeated payments with Bitcoin. The receivers can only be used
for a single payment.

~~~
undefined0
Since you could now be considered 'big leaders' in the bitcoin world. You
really should lobby for a BIP70 specification which allows for wallets to
subscribe people to payments. However, then would be the question of how can
both the wallet provider and Stripe agree on the exchange rate.

In short, I'd like to see BIP70 become like PayPal's IPN, so it can notify
websites of subscriptions, refunds, payment requests, instant payment
confirmation from a trusted third party (Coinbase would be considered trusted
to tell us a payments been instantly recieved without having to wait for
confirmation), etc.

I've have these ideas for a while but I'm not known in the bitcoin space so my
comments don't make any impact. Stripe could considering thinking about such
specifications, I hope?

~~~
aaxe
Paypal's IPN is the worst piece of garbage ever.

------
diaz
I'd never thought I'd read so many comments about people questioning whether
using Bitcoins to buy anything is useful or not or even if people would use.
Specially in a place like this with so many technology aware people.

Giving more choices for payment is good. Sellers are including more people
that can pay for their services/products. If nobody buys anything with bitcoin
they lose nothing and business goes as usual. Simple.

Please get out of your bubbles and think a little more if you can't find
scenarios where people would use Bitcoins rather than money. In my case If I
start seeing more places accepting Bitcoins it's only more probable that I'll
use it and put more money in my wallet for that. I can remember of two places
I could use Bitcoins right now: Humble Bundles and Namecheap. Given the choice
and more sellers using it I will use that option more and more.

Some of the credit card scenarios people are talking is again US specific. If
I want to pay for something quick and simple online I have to get really out
of my way to do it. I don't have credit cards and lots and lots of people
don't have them and avoid them. I don't want to have one ever. Currently for
me to pay anything online I have to go to MBNet to create a virtual credit
card for each purchase I want to do. That card is valid for one purchase only
and for a single shop/seller. There's another option where I can create a
virtual card valid for one year but I can only use it in the same seller/shop.
Only after that can I use all those payments systems on the internet. If I
want to be protected with Paypal I have to add and remove a card each time I
need to use it. So lately I just input the virtual credit card info where
sellers ask in their forms and don't even care about paypal or amazon or
anything else.

Basically I don't really have much of any kind of protection anyway doing all
this work above comparing to the simple use case of having bitcoins and just
directly giving you the money without caring anymore. Plus I don't have to
keep looking at my credit card looking for any suspicious transaction that the
seller could at any time issue to me. I give the money exactly that I want and
I can just go with my life without thinking about it anymore.

And this is just my point of view. I can clearly imagine many people with very
different reasons simply using Bitcoins if that option is available.

Now the only thing really missing is being able to implement a simple shop
using Stripe from this side of the Atlantic :P.

Congratulations Stripe and keep the good work.

~~~
StavrosK
>Now the only thing really missing is being able to implement a simple shop
using Stripe from this side of the Atlantic :P.

Why can't you? Stripe has supported the UK and other countries for a year or
something.

~~~
diaz
Portugal, Spain, Italy, Germany, France...?

Only thing I know is that it was in beta around some countries.

------
veryluckyxyz
Can someone tell how Stripe (or other providers) guarantee immunity from price
fluctuations?

~~~
nate_martin
Merchant sets their price in dollars (for example) and the price in Bitcoin is
calculated when a transaction is made using the current btc exchange rate.

~~~
veryluckyxyz
Stripe (in this case) receives bitcoins and it is exposed to fluctuations. So,
if Stripe guarantees the seller a price for the bitcoin, I would think that
Stripe has a mechanism to limit or even eliminate the risk from that exposure.
I am interested in learning how Stripe does it. Do you know how Stripe does
it?

~~~
aet
Can they do the conversion realtime and charge the client whatever rate they
get?

~~~
veryluckyxyz
Perhaps, but they don't say it explicitly. For example, Bitpay says (at
[https://bitpay.com/](https://bitpay.com/))

` Charge $1, get $1 Instant conversion, no transaction fee, and bank deposits
in US Dollars, Euros, GBP, CAD and more. We take the bitcoin exchange rate
risk, your customers get the best rate on the market, and you get a payment
you can count on, every time. `

------
TomAnthony
Interesting that Stripe invested in Stellar
([https://stripe.com/blog/stellar](https://stripe.com/blog/stellar)) which I
couldn't help think of as a 'Bitcoin competitor'.

It makes sense that they still increase support for the more
established/famous cryptocurrency that is Bitcoin but I thought they would
still be interested in somehow relating this to Stellar.

------
yellowapple
Is there a way to just accept Bitcoin using this without automatically
converting it into a fiat currency? That would make this complete for me.

------
jxm262
> Fluctuation-resistant - Avoid exchange rate hassles—specify amounts in USD
> and we’ll send you dollars.

I don't think I fully understand this part. Does the exchange rate remain
static for a period of time, or do they just mean to say it's automatically
converted for you? If the latter, how is this fluctuation resistant.

Regardless, I'm very happy. Been waiting for this to come out of beta.

~~~
rukittenme
Fluctuation resistant for the seller but not the buyer.

------
pugz
This is fantastic. However, I couldn't see any mention of a Bitcoin-specific
minimum charge. Is it still 50c as per Stripe's existing documentation[1]?

[1]: [https://support.stripe.com/questions/smallest-amount-to-
char...](https://support.stripe.com/questions/smallest-amount-to-charge)

~~~
runeks
I'd really like to see this question answered as well.

Also, I'd really like to know: is the credit card fee still ~2.5% if I receive
50 cents USD using credit card via Stripe? Or is there an additional, flat
rate fee?

------
nailer
Greg Brockman from Stripe said this is exactly what it would take for BTC to
take off commercially a year ago:

(after discussing why regular people probably don't want to store value in
BitCoins)

> However, Bitcoin has huge potential as a way to transport value. It’s
> surprisingly difficult to move money today ...compounding the issue, value
> transport becomes especially challenging as soon as there’s a regional
> border involved.

> Cryptocurrencies have given us a real opportunity to solve these problems.

[https://stripe.com/blog/bitcoin-the-stripe-
perspective](https://stripe.com/blog/bitcoin-the-stripe-perspective)

~~~
foobarqux
I thought he said BTC wouldn't succeed as a payment mechanism, but might as a
settlement and clearing one.

~~~
nailer
You can specify amounts in USD and get the exact amount back regardless of BTC
fluctuations, which seems close to his original premise.

~~~
foobarqux
Not that close since to the user it is a BTC payment system.

~~~
Pyxl101
Why couldn't the user buy the bitcoin in dollars moments before, using the
same price-stabilizing mechanism? Could an exchange engage in both operations
simultaneously somehow as a sort of market-maker?

------
veesahni
Is this available to canadian stripe accounts too or just US?

~~~
krithix
I work for Stripe. While people anywhere around the world can pay with Bitcoin
(and we've seen payments from over 60 countries during our beta), we currently
only support merchants who have U.S. bank accounts. (Fun fact: Our first
Bitcoin user had a Canadian Stripe account, but also a U.S. bank account.)

~~~
isthisforme
And can you clarify if by us bank account you mean 'us dollar denominated', or
'us dollar denominated and a us bank'. USD bank accounts are very common in
Canada.

Not that needing a US bank account is necessarily a show-stopper, but it's
more work.

~~~
krithix
USD-denominated and a U.S. bank for now.

------
stefanobernardi
By enabling BTC payments, does this mean that Stripe will change the list of
"prohibited" uses? That list is in line with what are usually high-risk card
transactions, but by removing that risk (almost) entirely, it seems like this
could finally enable a wave of new commerce on diverse and neglected
categories.

I'm probably assuming a no as they'll want to keep the card AND bitcoin and
not do jut BTC, but a man can dream.

~~~
espeed
The Stripe TOS says:

"Most Prohibited Business categories are _imposed by Card Network rules_ or
the requirements of our banking providers or processors"
([https://stripe.com/us/prohibited-
businesses](https://stripe.com/us/prohibited-businesses)).

Bitcoin avoids much of the high-risk card issues so will Stripe update its
Bitcoin TOS to allow more high-risk transactions and regulated industries?

------
Toadsoup
This is great and I intend on giving it a shot to accept bitcoin in the near
future.

I would like to see it as an option to keep bitcoin rather than having it
automatically exchanged to USD on my behalf.

It would allow people to assess their own risk tolerance if they wanted to
hold bitcoin or if they had other services that work well with bitcoin.

------
amelius
Could this mean we will soon be moving towards micropayments?

And perhaps less dependence on app stores?

~~~
runeks
Now _that_ is actually an area where bitcoin makes sense.

Use Stripe to put up a payment gateway in front of articles. Just send 50
cents in bitcoin to the address that is displayed, and you can read the
article instantly.

------
knwang
Congrats team Stripe! Fantastic feature as always.

In our case, we promise full refund if our users are not happy with our
service. Is there a way to refund customers bitcoins as easy as how it is
currently with credit cards?

------
MMateus
Great news! I wish Stripe can be available in more countries soon.

------
hippich
What customer loose when paying with bitcoin - protection. On the other hand
when customer pays with credit card, merchant essentially do not have
protection. But merchants cover that by increasing price to cover accidental
fraud. Therefore merchants should lower price by 2-3% (credit card processing
fees) + 5%-25% (not sure about exact amount) to cover lost protection by
customer and gained protection for business.

When this happen, I bet there will be some people who will be alright getting
better price in exchange for loss of some protections. Otherwise it doesn't
make sense now to not use credit card.

------
27182818284
What is the "open wallet" step? That can't mean I _have_ to have a wallet with
Stripe, can it?

~~~
collision
The "Open Wallet" link has a bitcoin URI. If you have a wallet installed,
it'll pop open that wallet. More here:
[https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0021.mediawi...](https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0021.mediawiki)

Stripe doesn't have a Bitcoin wallet for consumers.

------
heathermiller
A "how it's made" of the amazing product intro/page would be a very nice
read!!

------
isthisforme
Can someone explain if a Canadian stripe merchant processing in US dollars can
use this?

------
brosky117
I'm not really into front-end but man...that page was beautifully executed.

------
badgercapital
Wow.. I know a few startups that just killed after this announcement.

------
TACIXAT
Hey Stripe, are you reading this?

I'm deciding between payment processors right now. I plan to have excessively
low prices, in the range of 1 dollar per year. PayPal and Amazon offer micro
transaction pricing at 5 cents + 5% of each transaction. Care to compete?

~~~
woowowp
0.5% is less than 5 cents + 5%.

For a $1 transaction, Paypal/Amazon would charge 10 cents and Stripe would
charge 0.5 cents for a bitcoin transaction. Unless you're talking about credit
card transactions.

~~~
TACIXAT
I am talking about credit card transactions. I plan on accepting bitcoin, but
I want to accept normal payments as well. Right now it seems like Amazon +
Coinbase will be my choice.

------
clamprecht
Does it allow bitcoin-paid monthly subscriptions?

~~~
krithix
Stripe doesn't currently support recurring or repeated payments with
Bitcoin—the receivers can only be used for a single payment.

------
kanwal
Can this be used in India ?

------
ericfrederich
Too bad BitCoin isn't default and more of an opt-out kind of thing.
Eventually...

------
logicallee
why do we - normal people - want to handle a currency free of any legal
oversight or reversibility/traceability even in the case of outright theft?

see this story of ours just from the past month -

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9053621](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9053621)

they know exactly who did it and why/how it happened...

what advantage is there to the coins themselves being completely untraceable,
transactions completely irreversible?

suppose your net worth is largely a matter of the value of your startup at its
last valuation. would you prefer to just have that many hundred thousand
dollars in cash in your home? But with the added benefit that it can disappear
at a distance without anyone visiting your home?

Bitcoin is great but isn't it about time to put a sane banking layer on top of
it?

Note: like all sane people I believe in a mix of government oversight and
personal freedom, maybe 90% the latter. But having an untraceable currency
doesn't make me any more free. Unlike every tech luminary, Satoshi can't even
identify himself.

~~~
Karunamon
Because legal oversight and traceability are often bugs, not features. The
middlemen required to deal with those two things are often bloated, slow to
react, corrupt, expensive, and in some cases, all of the above.

The idea that "I want to send some value to someone else" requires jumping
through so many hoops, and having so many bites taken out of it, in 2015, is a
bit silly.

How do chargebacks work with cash? Exactly. Yet we still use it.

This honestly smells like the government anti-encryption argument. "You have
nothing to hide, so why do so?"

------
curiously
I just don't think this is useful unless you were offering a service that only
works with bitcoins. The wide adoption won't change Bitcoin, it's the
unpredictable and manipulative market pricing that makes me hesitant to accept
it.

With USD you know that if you got 100 it won't turn into $10 in a few weeks
but the reality with bitcoin is that the threat exists

------
diltonm
If Stripe is doing Bitcoin then I now know to stay from and recommend others
to say away from Stripe.

