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For those outside Australia, you can pay most bills at the post office (Australia Post) or online via the post office's PostBillPay service. Basically, AusPost
by lessnonymous 13y ago
For those outside Australia, you can pay most bills at the post office (Australia Post) or online via the post office's PostBillPay service. Basically, AusPost act as a middleman between the biller and the customer. But AusPost only accept Australian Dollar payments.
So from my reading of it, Ryan's project takes a bitcoin payment from the customer, converts it into AUD, then connects to PostBillPay and pays the bill, then send the customer the receipt from PostBillPay.
Bill payments 1.0:
Customer -> Biller
Bill payments 2.0:
Customer -> PostBillPay -> Biller
Bill payments 3.0:
Customer -> BitBillPay -> PostBillPay -> Biller
It's a great idea .. but I imagine if it takes off, AusPost will implement pay-by-bitcoin in their own service.
- zhoutong 13y agoActually that's exactly the point of this project. I run a startup called CoinJar (the first VC-backed Bitcoin startup in Australia) and Bitbillpay consumes CoinJar Checkout API. I will open source the project once it has gained some initial traction. But before that, I will probably write a few tutorial-like blog posts to demonstrate how to integrate the seamless and unbranded Bitcoin checkout solution into any online business. But of course, Bitbillpay is actually easier and faster to use than POSTbillpay. For one thing, you don't have to enter your credit number, and you can automatically receive an email with the receipt. (Australia Post will ask you to "print out".)
- ghiculescu 13y agoWhat do you mean by "the first VC-backed startup in Australia"?
- lessnonymous 13y agoI think teaching a kitten to read your credit card and arrange it's kibble into a binary representation would be easier than using the POSTBillPay website. So this project is a proof-of-concept for CoinJar's Checkout API? I think doing a consumer approachable project to demonstrate something that's invisible like a new checkout system is a great idea!
- zhoutong 13y agoIt is absolutely a proof-of-concept. At the same time it's just one of the many tools I wish Bitcoin can have. I don't expect it to be profitable (unless you count credit card points) but I will keep it running to allow 694 billers in Australia to accept Bitcoin indirectly. Maybe someday they will see the value in CoinJar Checkout API and integrate directly. I'll even give them the source code I've written if they're too lazy to browse API docs. :-D
- nl 13y agoI imagine if it takes off, AusPost will implement pay-by-bitcoin in their own service As someone with occasional interactions with AusPost's software group: That'll take a few decades - they'd be better off buying you.