How To Accept Bitcoin On Your Website

http://blog.coinbase.com/post/37274999622/how-to-accept-bitcoin-on-your-website

by barmstrong • 14 years ago

229 73 14 years ago

blog.coinbase.com

Is this a dangerous thing to put on ones website at all?

yebyen8• 14 years ago

Dangerous? The only danger is that you might pay 1% fee when sending/converting your earnings back to USD. Also possible that the value of bitcoin tanks overnight, but there are historical charts that show this has not really happened but just once.

What kind of danger are you thinking?

The exchange could also go under and/or rob you. You should be careful about to whom you give your bank account numbers.

tmh88j• 14 years ago

>What kind of danger are you thinking?

My guess is he's referring to one of the many "dealers" that were hacked and had bitcoins stolen.

UnFundedHype• 14 years ago

Now how about a one button way for my users to buy bit coins. Buying bitcoins is an exhausting user experience

yebyen8• 14 years ago

You should just ask them to mail you cash. It's about equally reliable, from a buyer's perspective.

drivingmenuts• 14 years ago

I can spend cash at the corner store if it comes down to it. Bitcoin, not so much.

kirian4• 14 years ago

For US users Coinbase is one of the easiest ways to buy bitcoins. Link your bank account like you would with paypal and it's straightforward from there on.

tptacek• 14 years ago

I would be very hesitant to give a new entrant my bank account information, no matter what they did with it:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4703704

mrb• 14 years ago

Someone already mentioned how easy it is to buy bitcoins on coinbase.com.

Another option is https://www.bitinstant.com : deposit cash in any CVS/Walmart/etc location and instantly receive your bitcoins.

ROFISH• 14 years ago

The button is working on Chrome/Windows but not Firefox/Windows. (Amusingly, it also works in IE9/Windows)

smithzvk• 14 years ago

Also doesn't appear to work in Firefox/Ubuntu.

barmstrong4• 14 years ago

Thanks for the bug report! Just pushed out a fix for Firefox. Live in 5 min. Thanks!

kirian4• 14 years ago

Bitcoin merchant services sector is really heating up. Bitpay.com making big news with the recent Wordpress announcement, Walletbit (http://bitcoinmagazine.net/walletbit-launches-bank-transfers...) growing and adding more features and now Coinbase joining in. This open competition allowed by the open source nature of Bitcoin is great to see.

viraj_shah• 14 years ago

Great job Brian. Seems similar to one click Stripe button.

ww520• 14 years ago

How does refund work with Bitcoin? Since Bitcoin can have big swing, some users might opt to get the refund of bitcoin after a while.

brian_cloutier• 14 years ago

On their own, bitcoins are like cash in that they cannot be taken back once spent. However merchants can issue refunds as much as they'd like, and payment processors might offer a chargeback option. (although I'm not sure coinbase does)

pavel_lishin• 14 years ago

Are other currencies immune from this?

dllthomas4• 14 years ago

Most currencies that are dealt with online are more stable than BTC. But no, not "immune".

wmf3• 14 years ago

Merchants should refund an equivalent value of BTC, not the same amount paid.

DrStalker• 14 years ago

Why? Serious question, if I get a refund the amount isn't compensated for changes in the Australian dollar.

Either the buyer or seller will lose out if the value of bit-coins change, so is there a compelling reason for picking which party that is other than "merchants have the control to give whatever refund amount they want"

te• 14 years ago

What is coinbase's strategy re dispute resolution?

javert2• 14 years ago

Suggestion: I found the option "Send to a bitcoin address" to be confusing. I would have expected it to say "Send from a bitcoin address."

Upon further reflection, it's clear why I expected that.

First, when a user goes through a typical online checkout/payment, they are not concerned about where the money is going to, they are concerned about where it is coming from, i.e., putting their credit card info in.

Second, the prior option is "Send using my coinbase account," which reinforces what I was talking about in the other point I just made. For the sake of consistency, both options should be about sending from somewhere, not sending to somewhere.

An alternative way to do this would be having the first option say "Send using Coinbase" and the second option be "Send using the Bitcoin network," or something to that effect.

kirian4• 14 years ago

Yes, I agree with the above comment, "Pay using bitcoin" or "Send bitcoins" or something like that would be less confusing I think.

barmstrong4• 14 years ago

Ok good feedback. While technically it is correct that you are sending to a single bitcoin address (your payment can actually come from multiple bitcoin addresses) I agree it's confusing and the the distinction isn't important to more users.

It now reads like this: http://cl.ly/image/2n3Y3F261o1s

javert2• 14 years ago

Sweet, I like it much better that way.

Good point that your payment likely would come from multiple addresses, I had overlooked that.

discountgenius• 14 years ago

Are you working on plugins for integration with existing shopping carts?

e1ven• 14 years ago

I'd love to transparently accept BTC on a website I'm building, and have the merchant company send me a check every month..

I'm really hesitant to use (and thus implicitly recommend) Coinbase, since they're asking for Bank username/passwords from users.

Even thought it's not necessary, it makes these guys really look rather Shady to me, so I'm really reluctant to use their solution.

Has anyone else worked with Bitpay or other providers in this space? I'd love to hear how things went for you.

barmstrong4• 14 years ago

Founder here - just wanted to clarify that bank username/password is not required, you can also use deposit verification. But glad to hear you're interested in accepting bitcoin. Thanks!

clark-kent• 14 years ago

I think it is reasonable to remove the bank username/password requirement. All it does is raise red flags for potential users.

frozenport• 14 years ago

Suggestion 1: Offer to convert user funds to bitcoins (works as an annoying service). So you act as a money proxy.

Suggestion 2: Explain what bitcoins are for shopping cart users

dllthomas4• 14 years ago

annoying?

Karunamon2• 14 years ago

#1 puts you in shaky legal territory at least in the united states, since cash exchange services have a huge litany of regulations.

tled• 14 years ago

I also find it hard to explain to users what and how to use Bitcoin. I'm running a women fashion e-commerce site and most of users are women and non-tech.

kenj0418• 14 years ago

Great - now we only need a 'Why To Accept Bitcoin On Your Website' article.

kirian4• 14 years ago

Some good "Why To Accept Bitcoin" reasons in this article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2012/11/16/whats-your...

mtgx2• 14 years ago

What are the limitations regarding the location of the users or merchants, if there are any? Can I send and receive Bitcoin through Coinbase to and from anywhere? I assume the bank thing only works with US banks?

I'm not sure about the color of the button. Seems rather dull to me, and might be easily missed. You might want to A/B test that.

I like what you're doing, though. An easy to use Paypal-like service is very needed in the Bitcoin world. Wasn't Reddit a YC company, too? Maybe you can convince them to use your service instead of Bitpay, since they were thinking about using Bitcoin anyway.

kragen2• 14 years ago

Hi Brian, cool, congratulations on making it this far! Do you think the several hours latency to the bank account deposit is going to expose people to too much exchange rate volatility?

wmf3• 14 years ago

Since Bitcoin is unregulated, if they wanted to I guess Coinbase could lock in exchange rates at any time they choose (e.g. the time of the transaction) and then do the exchange later. Since that effectively shifts the currency risk from the merchant to Coinbase, they could choose to charge extra for such a service.

Osiris2• 14 years ago

Are there plans to make it possible to just receive the bitcoins directly rather than a cash payment in a bank account? I'd like to accept bitcoins but have the coins transferred to my wallet.

barmstrong4• 14 years ago

The default is just to receive bitcoins.

Cashing out to a bank account is optional and not on by default.

Osiris2• 14 years ago

Can you set the price in BTC rather than USD?

josscrowcroft• 14 years ago

Congrats Brian! I'll be integrating this on https://openexchangerates.org pretty soon (as well as including the BTC rate in the OXR API)

#edit - just wondering, would it be necessary to include another BTC checkout button, e.g. from mtgox? Or can any BTC user anywhere use this button to checkout?

Also - a big one - is there/will there be support for recurring payments? Actually, is that even possible?

jacoblyles• 14 years ago

This looks amazing. I've held off using bitcoins until now because of usability issues. This product looks like it can change that. I'm signing up today.

capdiz• 14 years ago

Can my bitcoin payments be sent to an external site or external bitcoin address other than a US bank account since i don't have one.

MarxGames• 14 years ago

I am almost ready to use this service but have some questions first:

1. Are Instant Payment Notifications sent only once with 0 confirmations? (hoping no)

2. How do I verify that the IPN is really coming from Coinbase? (hoping some simple signature check)

3. If I created a button worth 1.99$ then will it adjust BTC amount based on the current exchange rate or will it be static? (hoping it will adjust itself over time)

4. Also is it possible to see and edit buttons at a later time(hoping yes)

mtgx2• 14 years ago

Have you taken note of this possible vulnerability? You guys need to be more careful about security. You may only get one shot at this, if you get bad PR this early by getting hacked.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/14c7q0/coinbase_lau...

DoubleMalt2• 14 years ago

This is another case of convenience vs. security.

The Stripe button poses a similar problem, even if credit card number and cvc are arguably not as bad as actual login data.

But it is much easier to create a frictionless user experience if you do not have to redirect people to somewhere outside your side.

I recently implemented paymill payments and also there the only assurance for the customers is the 3D-Secure iFrame, if their credit card is 3D secure enabled ...

dlitz• 14 years ago

> But it is much easier to create a frictionless user experience if you do not have to redirect people to somewhere outside your side.

Under this model, how do you train ordinary users to avoid phishing?

GigabyteCoin• 14 years ago

Good advice.

But I can't help but ask, this isn't THE MtGox providing this info, is it? :P

fruchtose• 14 years ago

Compared to other Bitcoin exchanges, I have high hopes that you guys are more confident. Taking a page out of Stripe's book is the right move, because you look less like previous Bitcoin sites and more like a startup. If Coinbase suffered a security breach I would be very disappointed.

How To Accept Bitcoin On Your Website

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