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How's that relevant? The problem that the op is presumably attempting to solve is: "I want customers to pay me using a credit card".

• nathancahill 13y ago
  It's very relevant. Square is just another broken implementation of a broken system. Until we accept that centralized payment systems only benefits the central entities, we're going to be stuck with these problems.
  • wlesieutre 13y ago
    I don't know about that, chargebacks are a pretty nice thing.
    • nathancahill 13y ago
      Why do you need them? With Bitcoin, your credit card can't be skimmed or stolen, you can't be charged twice or for more than you authorized. As far as not shipping a product you paid for, economics takes care of that. Not delivering purchases is a bad business model.
      • nav1 13y ago
        Are you sure about that? If you get 1000 people to pay $100 for your "product" that you don't ship to them, that's a pretty good profit. You can just walk away with the money, never to be seen again (under that name at least). How the economics would take care of that is anyone's guess.
        • sharpneli 13y ago
          And precisely because of this the we have chargebacks. As a merchant it would be lovely to accept payments only via bitcoins. As a customer I'll avoid purchasing anything if I cannot issue a chargeback. So the only way to get me to actually buy anything via bitcoins is to remove all alternatives.
      • ewoodrich 13y ago
        > Not delivering purchases is a bad business model. Even if this were true, there are still X number of people who got ripped off with no recourse. > With Bitcoin, your credit card can't be skimmed or stolen No, but your private key can be stolen/lost, and in that event, you don't have the benefit of fraud protection.
        • nathancahill 13y ago
          If your private key is lost or stolen, you have bigger problems.
          • the_mitsuhiko 13y ago
            Correct. However stolen credit card numbers are a much smaller problem than that.
    • kevinchen 13y ago
      @nathancahill http://xkcd.com/325/ http://xkcd.com/325/
      • nathancahill 13y ago
        @kevinchen http://www.icanbarelydraw.com/comic/2565 http://www.icanbarelydraw.com/comic/2565 ;)
        • nandemo 13y ago
          The ending says that "any recipient" can initiate a payment, but of course that's not true; see OP's complaint.
  • hdevalence 13y ago
    "Build a new financial system" is not a relevant answer to "How can I accept payments from the majority of Americans?".
    • nathancahill 13y ago
      No need to build a new financial system, the new financial system is already in place. It needs wider adoption. In the time it took him to write the post complaining about Square, OP could have integrated BTC payments via Coinbase. He could even offer a BTC discount, since he's saving 2-3% on processing fees. If his product is in demand, customers will find a way to pay for it, even if they haven't used Bitcoin before.
      • dag11 13y ago
        There's no bitcoin equivalent for the experience of being able to have someone physically swipe their credit/debit card in your phone for point of sale payment. Bitcoin cannot replace all point of sale transactions that Square enables.
        • Karunamon 13y ago
          NFC via bitcoin wallet apps.
          • eropple 13y ago
            And once more the crowd asks, "who's going to use it?". There is a very, very tiny competitive advantage to supporting Bitcoin. There is a catastrophic competitive disadvantage to not supporting the basic method of Internet transactions.
            • Karunamon 13y ago
              Who says you have to stop taking cards? But physically, there's very little difference between an NFC swipe and a card swipe.
  • jessaustin 13y ago
    ...only benefit the central entities... The "central entities", whatever they may be, are certainly not the only parties that benefit. To be successful, we must broaden the appeal of the changes we hope to see.
  • nav1 13y ago
    > Until we accept that centralized payment systems only benefits the central entities, we're going to be stuck with these problems. That's beyond ridiculous. The main reason here is that they are trying to prevent their service from being used for fraudulent purposes. How would Bitcoin change that? Realistically, there would still need to be some form of identity verification. The actual problem here is that it's really hard to verify a person's identity over the Internet. The questions in the article can be answered by a determined attacker, so it's clearly the verification system that's broken.
  • deleted 13y ago
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