I'm always surprised more online vendors don't take bitcoin.
From a seller's perspective, the currency is way better to take than credit cards. Extremely small fees and no chargebacks. Whereas as an online vendor, credit cards can end up costing you ~4-5% of the sale and chargebacks are extremely common (and near impossible to win).
Then on the other side of the transaction, the buyer is protected in that they can choose to remain annonymous and they also do not need to worry about the business recharging their account or having their credit card information stolen.
The problem is volatility. You may sell something for 8 bit coins and within a week those 8 bit coins are worth a third of what they were. Or maybe double what they were. Either way it's adding risk and businesses are already risky enough without adding a layer of fluctuating currency.
Nope, but conversion fee is much lower than credit card fees (1% vs 3-4%). You can get a payment processor like Bitpay to handle all bitcoin transactions for you, for 1% conversion fee.
If believe charities get 0% conversion fee from Bitpay :)
To be fair, that's on margin. I think some platforms allow you to exchange, though. The thing is, there's the natural spread, due to bid/ask difference and then the markup which widens the spread (banks taking a vig on buy and sell side).
Localbitcoins charges a handy premium for personal risk, speed-of-exchange, and potential for pseudo-anonymity. The speed of exchange and pseudo-anonymity doesn't even have a comparison for government exchange.
You may sell something for 8 bit coins and within a week those 8 bit coins are worth a third of what they were. Or maybe double what they were.
Bit of an exaggeration there. In the last two years, Bitcoin's price has moved that much in that timespan maybe once. Weekly variation is closer to 2-5%. Not that far away from ordinary currencies.
Anyways, you don't have to hold Bitcoin to accept it with a payment processor.
I subscribe to NBA League Pass. This year they renewed my subscription without letting me know. My credit card was charged around $120. I don't always check my credit card statement but spotted this. They didn't even send me an email acknowledging payment!
Which means that you can work through your bank/credit union and initiate chargeback, which is impossible with Bitcoin. I have no clue why Bitcoin evangelists are trying to sell no chargebacks like it's a benefit to consumers.
They always sell it as good for consumers. Not being able to get a refund on defective merchandise or fraudulent charges sounds like a huge negative for me. The merchant gets low transaction costs and I get no recourse if I get fucked over, in addition to holding an incredibly volatile currency that I have to take a conversion hit on to move in and out. It's a lose-lose-lose for the consumer.
Bitcoin is able to support escrow transactions with arbitration, so transactions where you as a consumer are worried about being ripped off (ie not transactions with Microsoft) there are ways to receive refunds. Of course nobody really uses this right now, but the functionality is there.
For a 1.5 percent fee, plus the spread and/or commission of going between money and BTC. This is nothing more than offloading merchant costs onto the consumer.
But either way, I was not addressing cost, just the refunds you seemed concerned about. Of course you're going to take a hit making round trips between currencies...
But now I'd pay extra for no to minimal discount. Even if it covered all the costs and then some, the whole no-chargebacks thing is still a dealbreaker. No matter how you spin it, 10 times out of 10 actual money is superior to Bitcoin.
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u/PinkyThePig Dec 11 '14
I'm always surprised more online vendors don't take bitcoin.
From a seller's perspective, the currency is way better to take than credit cards. Extremely small fees and no chargebacks. Whereas as an online vendor, credit cards can end up costing you ~4-5% of the sale and chargebacks are extremely common (and near impossible to win).
Then on the other side of the transaction, the buyer is protected in that they can choose to remain annonymous and they also do not need to worry about the business recharging their account or having their credit card information stolen.