Do you accept Bitcoins as a payment method? Why? Why not? (Plus other questions)

[SPINIKR-RO]

We have been accepting BitPay for about 12 months now, if anyone has any questions let me know.

Nutshell OBservations:

Love BTC

Seen no trend in abuse due to BTC payments.

Mostly BTC customers are for VMs, and they appear to be easier to assist as the knowledge of the buyer is at a higher level.

Invoice totals appear higher for BTC, likely due to the advanced user knowing exactly what type of service is needed.

Have had no incidents with coin farming being a issue, most buyers inquire about it before doing it.

I just got done last week shipping our final paperwork to our accountant, I honestly wish more people used a non regulated currency it seems easier in every way, and it removes so many people in the middle wanting a transaction handout.

 

[kaniini]

My replies are point by point.

Curious who here accepts payments via Bitcoins for web hosting clients and how that's going for you.

It is going great. Early adoption of BTC really helped Tortoise grow quickly. Beyond that, I think BTC acceptance really showed how we differentiated verses competitors in terms of innovation.

I think there might be a little reluctance from some to do business with someone paying via Bitcoin initially, and was wondering how the clients who pay with it are in terms of their quality. (Good clients, bad clients, a mix up just like those paying with PayPal, etc). I only ask that because someone paying with BTC may be more likely to also register with false, but fraud check passable details and abuse the service as some do with PayPal as well. Curious if there is an increase, decrease, or no noticeable difference in the two when compared to clients paying with more traditional methods.

For us, the fraud modeling does not change much. Instead of collecting information, we monitor behaviour of the instances ordered. That said: the BTC customers have had basically 0 abuse, while our other customers have had abuse. I think the lack of chargeback makes it unattractive to most 'casual' scammers... and the professional cybercriminals stay away because the blockchain is public. They're still using crap like Liberty Reserve, etc.

Also, how does balancing your books differ if you have any noteworthy amount of Bitcoins? Do you disregard those, or whats your method of claiming them (assuming you're a real business who has to pay taxes and stuff)?

We report it on our books post-exchange, as recommended by the IRS etc.

How do you deal with refunds? I suspect that if someone issued you $12USD worth of Bitcoins 44 days ago, and you have a 45 day money back guarantee that you'd issue $12USD back in form of Bitcoins and not the "original amount" of bitcoins, correct?

We display all BTC values in terms of current exchange rate. There is no room for confusion here -- customers know that pricing is set based on USD, and that the BTC they would receive back is based on USD.

 

[texteditor]

Since bitcoins are similar to paying in cash

Yeah, given the volatility, I'll only agree with this comparison if you let me pay my next bill by giving you 20 seconds in one of these, full of $1 bills:

 

[KuJoe]

Yeah, given the volatility, I'll only agree with this comparison if you let me pay my next bill by giving you 20 seconds in one of these, full of $1 bills:

Volatility has no affect on us since we cash out to USD the instant the bitcoins arrive so if a client pays an invoice for $10 we receive $10 (minus the 1% fee).

 

[SPINIKR-RO]

The whole point is converting realtime BTC price to the equivalent USD. There is nothing insecure about accepting BTC because vendors such as BitPay provide the conversion for about %1 as mentioned above. Your invoice is properly converted in real time during checkout.

I dont think people realize this which leads to lack of adoption.

 

[joepie91]

My observation from this thread and other similar threads in the past: providers who have actually tried out accepting Bitcoin have positive experiences, in the meantime there are a few people who haven't tried it and are presenting it as the apocalypse.

 

[KuJoe]

Funny enough, my brother and I had a look through SD's BitPay history and our first payment we ever received was for a $12.99 invoice where the client paid 0.1396 bitcoins. As of typing this post, that $12.99 payment would be worth $123.20 today. Our second transaction was for a $35.99 invoice but was only for 0.0551 bitcoins for a value of $48.70 today. We started working out how much we'd "have" if we didn't convert the bitcoins to USD and just kept all of the bitcoins then we'd be looking at a MASSIVE profit... but no way to pay our bills.

 

[fusa]

First transaction: 2013/01/03

Paid: 1.6404 BTC

Converted: 16.50 EUR 

 1 year active Bitcoin (bitpay) usage, we are happy with the result. No chargebacks, no abuse with those users. And mostly skilled users.

 

[peterw]

Bitcon plus: Lesser fees, no chargeback so no fraud, instant money

Bitcon minus: exchange rate fluctuations

I found an old wallet 15BTC, time to buy a server.

 

[mikeg]

We have just started accepting bitcoin by bitpay.com.

For us it is working great, less fees than other payment gateways.

 

[WetPi]

Looking at this thread, ive decided to put bitcoin on as a payment method, lets see how it goes!

 

[javaj]

Wow, I'm impressed with all the success, guess I need to reconsider.

 

[oneilonline]

We have been tossing around the idea of accepting bitcoins but the main draw of hesitation is the volatility of the currency. No doubt its popularity will grow, in turn the value will grow, the big question is when will it cross that barrier???

 

[KuJoe]

We have been tossing around the idea of accepting bitcoins but the main draw of hesitation is the volatility of the currency. No doubt its popularity will grow, in turn the value will grow, the big question is when will it cross that barrier???

Why is volatility a factor? I would NEVER recommend holding onto Bitcoins unless you're doing it as an investment or you plan on buying something with them. As a company, your safest option is to let the clients pay in bitcoins but you convert them to your local currency as soon as they arrive.

 

[SPINIKR-RO]

Why is volatility a factor? I would NEVER recommend holding onto Bitcoins unless you're doing it as an investment or you plan on buying something with them. As a company, your safest option is to let the clients pay in bitcoins but you convert them to your local currency as soon as they arrive.

People dont understand the conversion process.

BTC does not effect the money you wish to receive... unless you opt to not convert the BTC immediately.

 

[perennate]

One problem is some people who pay with Bitcoin don't understand that most hosting providers will still require them to have legitimate details (with residential or corporate IP address, not VPN and stuff).

 

[joepie91]

One problem is some people who pay with Bitcoin don't understand that most hosting providers will still require them to have legitimate details (with residential or corporate IP address, not VPN and stuff).

I've noticed the same. That would be solved fairly quickly by stating so on the sign-up page, though.

 

[KuJoe]

I've noticed the same. That would be solved fairly quickly by stating so on the sign-up page, though.

People won't read it, that's why we make WHMCS throw an error if they're behind a VPN or proxy so the order doesn't go through. The number of tickets we receive now has dropped a bit.

 

[joepie91]

People won't read it, that's why we make WHMCS throw an error if they're behind a VPN or proxy so the order doesn't go through. The number of tickets we receive now has dropped a bit.

Could always make it an extra checkbox

 

[KuJoe]

Could always make it an extra checkbox

People will check anything. We used to have the following dropdown menu when clients would open a ticket:

"Did you check our website or Knowledge Base for your answer?":

1) No, please close my ticket.

2) Yes.

99% of support tickets selected "No, please close my ticket.", of those 99% at least 2/3 of the questions were answered on our website or KB (the most asked question we receive is "where are your servers located?"). If clients are determined to be ignorant there's no way to prevent it unless you stop them from doing what they are trying to do.

I recently removed the dropdown menu because it made people angry when we closed their tickets so I'm trying to find a new solution because clients also get angry if I just respond to their ticket with a link to their answer instead of reading it to them.