How I chose the payment system and why we added Bitcoin as a payment option
Recently, we added to the site of our wonderful Prague project with city GPS guides a full-fledged opportunity to make payments by credit cards directly on the site, as well as the opportunity to use Bitcoin for payment. In this regard, I decided to share with the readers of our wonderful IT blog experience, plus some of my own thoughts.
I will start, perhaps, from the second part, as long as I consider it more weighty and affecting the fundamental issues of the future of cryptocurrencies.
This is how the price is now displayed when you select options. At the top of the Euro, below, the cost of services in BTC at the current rate (-30% discount)
Over the past year, we have witnessed an exponential growth of interest in cryptocurrencies and ideas that they brought with them and which in the future have every reason to have a significant impact, both on the economy and social relations, and possibly in the future on the structure of society as a whole. I, for example, watch with great curiosity about the Etherium project and its implementation of Maidsafe . I will not go into the descriptions (those who are interested can find detailed information in publicly available sources), however, I strongly recommend to pay attention if you have not heard anything about these projects.
')
One way or another, despite such hectic interest and even the attention of such “sharks” like Virgin and DELL, cryptocurrency alone is not able to go beyond a relatively small circle of enthusiasts of the emerging market. Yes, and it is difficult to call it a full-fledged market, since basically it is about using cryptocurrency as an investment resource or tool. Those. in simple terms, participants either exchange cryptocurrencies or invest in a purchase based on the growth rate. There are still a number of large players with serious resources for calculating hash sums and an army of small miners participating in pools. Those. it can still be regarded as a “waiting segment”. The real business, as such, is still vanishingly small and the upward trend, in my opinion, is not as pronounced as it could be.
The self-evident question, which, I believe, many happy owners of BTC and interested in themselves periodically ask: what is the future of BTC in this situation? A couple of months ago, I met with my long-time friend an economist, a man of very progressive views, it should be noted. According to his statement (and I am completely in agreement with him) for BTC at the moment there are two main problems: 1) a very uneven distribution of savings 2) the absence of a real market. And the second thesis pulls the first.
Actually, the result of these our conversations and my own reflections is that I
a) found a number of interesting publications and related links.
b) added Bitcoin payment to the site of our project with GPS audio guides
This is what the payment interface on our site looks like when choosing the Bitcoin option. You can copy the payment line through the clipboard or use the QR code.
The procedure itself was so simple that, perhaps, even my short description would seem superfluous. Nevertheless, I will devote a couple of lines to this in order to demonstrate the simplicity of the process for those who may be planning such integration, but are not sure about the resource costs.
Until the last moment, I was convinced that in order to carry out full BTC processing I would need to keep a full-node wallet with my own script, generating one-time wallets for receiving payment, or registering on one of the newly minted online services. It turned out that everything is nowhere easier.
blockchain.info provides a simple and reliable API interface for making payments. No registration, no bureaucracy, no deductions. All in full accordance with the spirit of the idea and its purpose.
Get request returns the newly generated wallet number. In the same request, you send the number of your main wallet, where the payment will come in the end. Another query will show the amount in BTC converted at the current rate.
Immediately after conducting a request, a callback with all the data about the progress of the payment and receipt of confirmations starts to periodically arrive at the URL specified there. You are free to decide after how many confirmations you consider your payment to be reliably “past” (6 confirmations are the standard statistically significant value). Then you show “ok” in response to the callback and you can consider the passage of the payment to be completed. You can send registration confirmation to the client and notify the manager or partner about the new order.
As you know, for BTC payment verification is not quick. On average, experience has shown that it takes from 20 minutes to an hour to get 6 confirmations. Therefore, this currency is tipped for positions that do not require instant payment. In our case, this is the perfect solution. However, many enthusiasts use Bitcoin and for faster operations, reducing the confirmation threshold. Some time ago I visited The Pembury Tavern bar in Hackney (London). The bar is notable for the fact that it is one of the few institutions in London that accept BTC as payment. The bartender says that they do not specifically wait for 6 confirmations. To my question about trusting a buyer, the bartender grinned and said that, firstly, visitors usually come for a much longer time than they need for 6 confirmations. Secondly, people in general, as you know, are not prone to deception, and this requires some great skills, so the possible risks associated with such fair processing are minimal.
This is how it looks. Masha Borodich acquires a pint of Irish ale using Bitcoin's capital (shot from a video clip that we shot for the film “Cryptorevolution”)
And this is a check from The Pembury Tavern bar. This unique artifact was, of course, left to memory.
I am well aware that the businesses existing in Russia live in an atmosphere of constant fears and are accustomed to look back on the regulatory agencies and the “mad printer” all the time. Yes, and the bureaucratic machine, being the embodiment of the archaic collective unconscious of a famous cooperative, does not sleep and from time to time gives out all sorts of pearls . However, on the other hand, if you do not try to do something in this direction, do not introduce and convince others of the need to use cryptocurrencies in the real sector of the economy, then no positive changes will occur. In addition, as I dare to suggest, many Habra readers work with clients outside of Russia, and in this case, the question of formal barriers overwhelmingly disappears by itself. Nothing but goodwill and enthusiasm is required.
It may sound like another banal panegyric. But in reality, as I see it, the idea of ​​shifting the market to cryptographic towards the real production of goods and services requires its distribution and active discussion. The time has come for this.
Just want to say, the miracle did not happen. I managed to find an acceptable solution, however, as it turned out a little later, PayPal firmly settled on the position of the world monopolist in the online payment market for small businesses and with its competitors, while a serious “tension”. But first things first…
As a matter of fact, unlike the integration of Bitcoin payments, the change of a merchant partner for me was a spontaneous decision and the reason was more prosaic.
At the very start of our tourist GPS audio project, I thought that the original integrated payment through PayPal should be more than enough for a long time. I made some attempts to negotiate with my bank about accepting payments directly, but they asked for integration money and did not make concessions. So Paypal was chosen as the simplest and most obvious solution. With this, we actually lived a year.
However, at the end of last year, we began to receive complaints from customers that when paying with a credit card, PayPal asks to register as a customer, otherwise refuses to make a payment. At first I did not attach much importance to this, writing off a complaint about the banal inattention of the client. But, after such questions were repeated, I still decided to check what was the matter. And surprisingly ... did not find any problems. My payment Visa Electron was a great success. No logins, no passwords.
However, a little later, I decided to check the same procedure with my Czech card. And viola ... I saw in the familiar interface of PayPal new fields and checkboxes. It became clear that PayPal does this selectively and only for some part of the cardholders, At least for Eastern Europe (and, apparently, for Russia). In general, without hesitation, I decided that the time had come and went to dig in the network to find the “right” merchant partner in order to get rid of the “obtrusive hegemon”.
It quickly became clear that practically everything that is on the market is “old players in a new way”. Those. Mandatory fixed payments, poor API or its absence (the company's specialists are supposed to participate), as well as archaic models of communication and a lot of bureaucracy. Nevertheless, there were three very worthy candidates:
I would choose Stripe as the most ideally attractive and independent option. But, since I initially planned, ideally, to find an opportunity to receive payments immediately to a bank account in the Czech Republic, I decided to stay at BrainTree. Stripe does not have such an opportunity yet, but the employee with whom I corresponded, insisted that there were plans for expansion towards the European market. BrainTree was beautiful in everything. The excellent Sandbox and API allowed me to “sew” a new interface without any difficulty and to supplement the backend with the necessary payment functions (I also “screwed” and Bitcoin for one). I was in high spirits about finding such a convenient solution and prepared to fill out the registration form for a new commercial customer BrainTree, when suddenly, I stumbled upon the news on a message about ... the beginning of a long happy friendship BrainTree with PayPal. PayPal bought BrainTree. All my hopes of getting rid of the monopoly collapsed at once (a dull smile). Grieving for a while I sat down to fill out the form ...
The main mistake, which I will immediately mention, is for others not to repeat it in the future: it made sense to fill in the form immediately after the first tests. Because the registration procedure, contrary to my expectation, stretched out for three weeks and took a certain amount of time and effort to scan and send copies of paper documents (yes, yes, you were not mistaken, dear reader, they ask you to scan an extract from the bank, as well as an extract from the registry of the registration of companies, while you can receive a confirmation of the account by a simple call to the bank and the information about the company is freely available on the registry website). In general, after discussing the expediency of these actions as well as the reliability of forwarding a copy of personal documents, I received a link to the final contract and safely (three weeks later) signed it, thank the robots, with an electronic signature.
An important detail is the SSL certificate. We must pay tribute, BrainTree approached the problem of encryption elegantly. They have their own solution in the form of a JS library for asynchronous encryption of requests. Those. it is technically possible to send card data with high reliability even without SSL. However, this industry has its own standards, and users themselves feel calmer when they see the familiar “lock” in the corner. Therefore, without SSL, however, can not do.
I first decided to take advantage of the offer of NameCheap (5 Euro for a simple SSL certificate from Comodo), having decided that a free certificate from StartSSL will not be accepted by any browsers. In the process of testing, it turned out that, ironically, a simple StartSSL certificate works almost everywhere without hesitation (perhaps only not on older versions of IE), while the “pontovy” commercial Comodo gave slack in the relatively recent version of Safari on the iPad. In general, I have not yet changed the certificate, but for the future I think to change it to a banal StartSSL.
As a result, we have some not so significant, but noticeable increase in customers. Some disappointment in the "universe" regarding the hegemony of the hegemons (another dull smile). And enthusiasm for the emerging prospects in the use of cryptocurrency and new blockchain services.
And a separate call for professionals who are thinking of investing in “payments”: if you, colleagues, are thinking about creating some kind of open payment system alternative to PayPal, for example, in the European market for small and individual businesses, launch this project boldly. The field, with all the evidence, is not plowed and competing with special ones, comparable in terms of ease of integration and accessibility with the same Stripe, so far not particularly.
If you, dear reader, possess some amount in BTC or in some other tradable cryptocurrency, do not delay. Use it, whenever possible, as a settlement tool. Do not be greedy, waste your savings. Only in this way can you help launch this new mechanism for civilization to its full potential. And if you are a businessman, offer your services or goods in exchange for cryptocurrency, offer discounts to crypto clients. Make it attractive for those who are still not sure or are waiting for growth and with the expectation that someone else will start using cryptocurrency for regular payments earlier. You can take part in the formation of the market right now, by the fact of a full exchange for your own "live" goods or services.
Well, yes, come to Prague!
Ps. If you, dear reader, have any clarifying questions, do not be shy, ask! I am pleased to answer in the comments.
ethereum.org - the guys are working on a framework for constructing distributed systems using the blockchain mechanism to create smart contracts, implying any algorithmic transaction logic ( White Paper ) built into the protocol
maidsafe.net is a decentralized distributed p2p network service for managing and storing data using the blockchain mechanism at the protocol level (under development).
blockchain.info - a description of the blockchain.info API for organizing the acceptance of Bitcoin payments.
www.stripe.com
www.braintreepayments.com
www.wepay.com
StartSSL is a service that provides SSL certificates, incl. free (Class 1 X.509 SSL).
electronictourguide.com - in fact, our wonderful Prague service for issuing urban GPS audio guides, if someone has not seen :)
cardpaymentoptions.com is a catalog of electronic payment services with descriptions, business user ratings and comments.
usebitcoins.info - directory of businesses and services accepting Bitcoin as payment (with search by sections and geo-referenced).
I will start, perhaps, from the second part, as long as I consider it more weighty and affecting the fundamental issues of the future of cryptocurrencies.
This is how the price is now displayed when you select options. At the top of the Euro, below, the cost of services in BTC at the current rate (-30% discount)
Bitcoin and its market
Over the past year, we have witnessed an exponential growth of interest in cryptocurrencies and ideas that they brought with them and which in the future have every reason to have a significant impact, both on the economy and social relations, and possibly in the future on the structure of society as a whole. I, for example, watch with great curiosity about the Etherium project and its implementation of Maidsafe . I will not go into the descriptions (those who are interested can find detailed information in publicly available sources), however, I strongly recommend to pay attention if you have not heard anything about these projects.
')
One way or another, despite such hectic interest and even the attention of such “sharks” like Virgin and DELL, cryptocurrency alone is not able to go beyond a relatively small circle of enthusiasts of the emerging market. Yes, and it is difficult to call it a full-fledged market, since basically it is about using cryptocurrency as an investment resource or tool. Those. in simple terms, participants either exchange cryptocurrencies or invest in a purchase based on the growth rate. There are still a number of large players with serious resources for calculating hash sums and an army of small miners participating in pools. Those. it can still be regarded as a “waiting segment”. The real business, as such, is still vanishingly small and the upward trend, in my opinion, is not as pronounced as it could be.
The self-evident question, which, I believe, many happy owners of BTC and interested in themselves periodically ask: what is the future of BTC in this situation? A couple of months ago, I met with my long-time friend an economist, a man of very progressive views, it should be noted. According to his statement (and I am completely in agreement with him) for BTC at the moment there are two main problems: 1) a very uneven distribution of savings 2) the absence of a real market. And the second thesis pulls the first.
Actually, the result of these our conversations and my own reflections is that I
a) found a number of interesting publications and related links.
b) added Bitcoin payment to the site of our project with GPS audio guides
This is what the payment interface on our site looks like when choosing the Bitcoin option. You can copy the payment line through the clipboard or use the QR code.
A few words on the integration of Bitcoin payments
The procedure itself was so simple that, perhaps, even my short description would seem superfluous. Nevertheless, I will devote a couple of lines to this in order to demonstrate the simplicity of the process for those who may be planning such integration, but are not sure about the resource costs.
Until the last moment, I was convinced that in order to carry out full BTC processing I would need to keep a full-node wallet with my own script, generating one-time wallets for receiving payment, or registering on one of the newly minted online services. It turned out that everything is nowhere easier.
blockchain.info provides a simple and reliable API interface for making payments. No registration, no bureaucracy, no deductions. All in full accordance with the spirit of the idea and its purpose.
blockchain.info/api/receive?method=create&address=$receiving_address&callback=$callback_urlGet request returns the newly generated wallet number. In the same request, you send the number of your main wallet, where the payment will come in the end. Another query will show the amount in BTC converted at the current rate.
blockchain.info/tobtc?currency=EUR&value=12Immediately after conducting a request, a callback with all the data about the progress of the payment and receipt of confirmations starts to periodically arrive at the URL specified there. You are free to decide after how many confirmations you consider your payment to be reliably “past” (6 confirmations are the standard statistically significant value). Then you show “ok” in response to the callback and you can consider the passage of the payment to be completed. You can send registration confirmation to the client and notify the manager or partner about the new order.
As you know, for BTC payment verification is not quick. On average, experience has shown that it takes from 20 minutes to an hour to get 6 confirmations. Therefore, this currency is tipped for positions that do not require instant payment. In our case, this is the perfect solution. However, many enthusiasts use Bitcoin and for faster operations, reducing the confirmation threshold. Some time ago I visited The Pembury Tavern bar in Hackney (London). The bar is notable for the fact that it is one of the few institutions in London that accept BTC as payment. The bartender says that they do not specifically wait for 6 confirmations. To my question about trusting a buyer, the bartender grinned and said that, firstly, visitors usually come for a much longer time than they need for 6 confirmations. Secondly, people in general, as you know, are not prone to deception, and this requires some great skills, so the possible risks associated with such fair processing are minimal.
This is how it looks. Masha Borodich acquires a pint of Irish ale using Bitcoin's capital (shot from a video clip that we shot for the film “Cryptorevolution”)
And this is a check from The Pembury Tavern bar. This unique artifact was, of course, left to memory.
I am well aware that the businesses existing in Russia live in an atmosphere of constant fears and are accustomed to look back on the regulatory agencies and the “mad printer” all the time. Yes, and the bureaucratic machine, being the embodiment of the archaic collective unconscious of a famous cooperative, does not sleep and from time to time gives out all sorts of pearls . However, on the other hand, if you do not try to do something in this direction, do not introduce and convince others of the need to use cryptocurrencies in the real sector of the economy, then no positive changes will occur. In addition, as I dare to suggest, many Habra readers work with clients outside of Russia, and in this case, the question of formal barriers overwhelmingly disappears by itself. Nothing but goodwill and enthusiasm is required.
It may sound like another banal panegyric. But in reality, as I see it, the idea of ​​shifting the market to cryptographic towards the real production of goods and services requires its distribution and active discussion. The time has come for this.
Alternative PayPal for accepting regular credit cards
Just want to say, the miracle did not happen. I managed to find an acceptable solution, however, as it turned out a little later, PayPal firmly settled on the position of the world monopolist in the online payment market for small businesses and with its competitors, while a serious “tension”. But first things first…
As a matter of fact, unlike the integration of Bitcoin payments, the change of a merchant partner for me was a spontaneous decision and the reason was more prosaic.
At the very start of our tourist GPS audio project, I thought that the original integrated payment through PayPal should be more than enough for a long time. I made some attempts to negotiate with my bank about accepting payments directly, but they asked for integration money and did not make concessions. So Paypal was chosen as the simplest and most obvious solution. With this, we actually lived a year.
However, at the end of last year, we began to receive complaints from customers that when paying with a credit card, PayPal asks to register as a customer, otherwise refuses to make a payment. At first I did not attach much importance to this, writing off a complaint about the banal inattention of the client. But, after such questions were repeated, I still decided to check what was the matter. And surprisingly ... did not find any problems. My payment Visa Electron was a great success. No logins, no passwords.
However, a little later, I decided to check the same procedure with my Czech card. And viola ... I saw in the familiar interface of PayPal new fields and checkboxes. It became clear that PayPal does this selectively and only for some part of the cardholders, At least for Eastern Europe (and, apparently, for Russia). In general, without hesitation, I decided that the time had come and went to dig in the network to find the “right” merchant partner in order to get rid of the “obtrusive hegemon”.
It quickly became clear that practically everything that is on the market is “old players in a new way”. Those. Mandatory fixed payments, poor API or its absence (the company's specialists are supposed to participate), as well as archaic models of communication and a lot of bureaucracy. Nevertheless, there were three very worthy candidates:
I would choose Stripe as the most ideally attractive and independent option. But, since I initially planned, ideally, to find an opportunity to receive payments immediately to a bank account in the Czech Republic, I decided to stay at BrainTree. Stripe does not have such an opportunity yet, but the employee with whom I corresponded, insisted that there were plans for expansion towards the European market. BrainTree was beautiful in everything. The excellent Sandbox and API allowed me to “sew” a new interface without any difficulty and to supplement the backend with the necessary payment functions (I also “screwed” and Bitcoin for one). I was in high spirits about finding such a convenient solution and prepared to fill out the registration form for a new commercial customer BrainTree, when suddenly, I stumbled upon the news on a message about ... the beginning of a long happy friendship BrainTree with PayPal. PayPal bought BrainTree. All my hopes of getting rid of the monopoly collapsed at once (a dull smile). Grieving for a while I sat down to fill out the form ...
Bureaucracy BrainTree
The main mistake, which I will immediately mention, is for others not to repeat it in the future: it made sense to fill in the form immediately after the first tests. Because the registration procedure, contrary to my expectation, stretched out for three weeks and took a certain amount of time and effort to scan and send copies of paper documents (yes, yes, you were not mistaken, dear reader, they ask you to scan an extract from the bank, as well as an extract from the registry of the registration of companies, while you can receive a confirmation of the account by a simple call to the bank and the information about the company is freely available on the registry website). In general, after discussing the expediency of these actions as well as the reliability of forwarding a copy of personal documents, I received a link to the final contract and safely (three weeks later) signed it, thank the robots, with an electronic signature.
About SSL certificate
An important detail is the SSL certificate. We must pay tribute, BrainTree approached the problem of encryption elegantly. They have their own solution in the form of a JS library for asynchronous encryption of requests. Those. it is technically possible to send card data with high reliability even without SSL. However, this industry has its own standards, and users themselves feel calmer when they see the familiar “lock” in the corner. Therefore, without SSL, however, can not do.
I first decided to take advantage of the offer of NameCheap (5 Euro for a simple SSL certificate from Comodo), having decided that a free certificate from StartSSL will not be accepted by any browsers. In the process of testing, it turned out that, ironically, a simple StartSSL certificate works almost everywhere without hesitation (perhaps only not on older versions of IE), while the “pontovy” commercial Comodo gave slack in the relatively recent version of Safari on the iPad. In general, I have not yet changed the certificate, but for the future I think to change it to a banal StartSSL.
Instead of conclusions
As a result, we have some not so significant, but noticeable increase in customers. Some disappointment in the "universe" regarding the hegemony of the hegemons (another dull smile). And enthusiasm for the emerging prospects in the use of cryptocurrency and new blockchain services.
And a separate call for professionals who are thinking of investing in “payments”: if you, colleagues, are thinking about creating some kind of open payment system alternative to PayPal, for example, in the European market for small and individual businesses, launch this project boldly. The field, with all the evidence, is not plowed and competing with special ones, comparable in terms of ease of integration and accessibility with the same Stripe, so far not particularly.
If you, dear reader, possess some amount in BTC or in some other tradable cryptocurrency, do not delay. Use it, whenever possible, as a settlement tool. Do not be greedy, waste your savings. Only in this way can you help launch this new mechanism for civilization to its full potential. And if you are a businessman, offer your services or goods in exchange for cryptocurrency, offer discounts to crypto clients. Make it attractive for those who are still not sure or are waiting for growth and with the expectation that someone else will start using cryptocurrency for regular payments earlier. You can take part in the formation of the market right now, by the fact of a full exchange for your own "live" goods or services.
Well, yes, come to Prague!
Ps. If you, dear reader, have any clarifying questions, do not be shy, ask! I am pleased to answer in the comments.
List of links and resources mentioned in the article
ethereum.org - the guys are working on a framework for constructing distributed systems using the blockchain mechanism to create smart contracts, implying any algorithmic transaction logic ( White Paper ) built into the protocol
maidsafe.net is a decentralized distributed p2p network service for managing and storing data using the blockchain mechanism at the protocol level (under development).
blockchain.info - a description of the blockchain.info API for organizing the acceptance of Bitcoin payments.
www.stripe.com
www.braintreepayments.com
www.wepay.com
StartSSL is a service that provides SSL certificates, incl. free (Class 1 X.509 SSL).
electronictourguide.com - in fact, our wonderful Prague service for issuing urban GPS audio guides, if someone has not seen :)
As well as some links to resources that are not mentioned in the context, but have independent value within the framework of this topic.
cardpaymentoptions.com is a catalog of electronic payment services with descriptions, business user ratings and comments.
usebitcoins.info - directory of businesses and services accepting Bitcoin as payment (with search by sections and geo-referenced).
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/231163/
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