My Customers Keep Requesting The Open-Source BitCoin As A Payment Method

[sunnankar]

We are a couple of attorneys selling politically sensitive digital products for protecting basic human rights like freedom of speech and have been receiving an increasingly larger number of requests for the open-source BitCoin as a payment option. Currently, all of them are handled manually but we would like to automate this via E-Junkie or some other method like Zen Cart, etc.



Browsing through the forums I read the request for Dwolla support and reply about the time consuming nature of adding payment options. I think in BitCoin's case because it is open-source software it should not be very difficult or time consuming to integrate as a payment option as there is no third-party to deal with via JSON, API, etc. permissions as transactions are verified and cleared by the open-source network.



If you could please add support for BitCoin I would greatly appreciate it as it would help us cater to our customer's desires and provide a more solid foundation for our business model which means we can keep paying E-Junkie every month :)



The last thing we need is to end up like Wikileaks and their banking blockade with Visa, Mastercard and Paypal which was not compelled by a government but merely because they desired to squash freedom of speech:



http://wikileaks.org/Banking-Blockade.html

http://www.weusecoins.com/

[E-junkie_Guru]

We can add your request to our wishlist for consideration as a possible new payment processor to support; however, to be quite frank, I would not anticipate its implementation anytime soon. There has not been a lot of demand from our other merchants for BitCoin vs. other processors we're considering such as Amazon Payments, MoneyBookers and Dwolla, and the latter can apparently handle BitCoin-funded payments on its own, so that may do the trick indirectly.

[stuffexists]

I agree with the thread author. I have been getting increasing demand for bitcoin payments...and its the fact that its increasing that has my attention. I do not know what you mean by 'the latter can apparently handle Bitcoin', but if this is the case t would be helpful to have a guide on implementing this bitcoin payment method. I believe OkPay.com may have recently implemented bitcoin payments as well? They are likely more compatible then dwolla.

[sunnankar]

@stuffexists, I have actually got a shop up and running for digital goods and there is only payment via bitcoin but the problem is I cannot currently accommodate my affiliates. You can see how it works:



http://www.howtovanish.com/bitcoin/index.php



Because there are NO transaction fees, monthly bank account fees, or chargebacks and one's bitcoin wallet cannot be frozen therefore I greatly prefer bitcoins to Google Checkout or Paypal.



Had a horrible experience with Paypal freezing my account in order to simply verify the address while I was on vacation. I cannot have that kind of risk introduced into my business as it resulted in my affiliates, independent contractors and virtual assistants getting paid late.



So we have switched to bitcoins since one's wallet cannot be frozen. The next piece is to switch over most of my revenue streams to bitcoins but I want to keep most of my affiliates and have the system easily administered like through E-Junkie. Plus, with all the risk with banking institutions I feel safer with my cash in bitcoins instead of dollars or euros in bank accounts.



FYI, the code for creating the bitcoin shop is open-source on Github and fairly simple manipulate.



https://strongcoin.com/blog/bitcoinmicropayments_with_strongcoin

[stuffexists]

looks like https://bit-pay.com/ and https://www.btcinch.com/ are options as well. Not sure how these integrate with e-junkie.com yet.

[jrockdc]

I also request that you add the bitcoin option to e-junkie checkout. I currently have paypal pro, but have been getting requests for bitcoin as well. Incorporating bitcoin into e-junkie would be a great way for you and your customers to get new clients.

[sunnankar]

I am not sure the Chef understands that bitcoin is not a 'payment processor' but its own form of currency based on open source software. Consequently, there would not be any third-parties to deal with in implementing it with e-junkie.



www.bitinstant.com lets people deposit cash into one of 10,000 branches throughout the US and then have $$$ to buy bitcoins within about an hour which can then be used to purchase items. So this would be an additional useful service to be able to sell digital products for cash in a fairly quick way; we used to accept physical envelopes through the mail.



The code has been written to handle micropayments:



https://github.com/ianpurton/StrongCoin.com-Payments-API-Example



What would be nice about incorporating it into bitcoin is the ability to integrate the affiliate program. Several of my colleagues want to start using bitcoins for their products also.

[jrockdc]

I think what most of us would like is to have the "pay with bitcoin" button/option present in the cart alongside "pay with paypal" and "pay with credit card" for those who use paypal pro. Maybe this is doable already, and I just don't know how to do it.

[gavseim]

Add me to the list. Lets get Bitcoin added as an option somehow. This could be a valuable thing and EJ well might get some user growth simply for offering it.

[sunnankar]

E-Junkie Support, can this feature be revisited?



Recently WordPress began accepting Bitcoin for all paid products and services. I have been getting increased numbers of requests from customers to accept payment via Bitcoin and I direct them to a make-shift solution we have implemented. Integrating Bitcoin as suggested by jrockdc should take only minimal programming resources.



A significant portion of our sales are already occurring via Bitcoin. So far I have been happy with the E-Junkie solution but it is getting to the point where E-Junkie's cart not having a Bitcoin option coupled with having to cobble together a make-shift solution is leading to scattered traffic, analytics problems, greater time commitments and ultimately lower conversions and less revenue.



As a result, I may have to remove the E-Junkie solution and replace it with some other service which has Bitcoin integrated (which will be increasingly easy given the WordPress community's support and carts with Bitcoin plugins already built).

[E-junkie_Guru]

Some form of BitCoin support is still on the wishlist for now. At the moment, all of our spare Development resources (aside from routine maintenance and helping Support troubleshoot issues for sellers) are being dedicated towards completion of the new Admin project, which is a prerequisite to adding any settings/controls that may be necessary for sellers to actually use any major new features or functionality, such as any new payment methods.

[bunkbedking]

When is the admin project scheduled to be completed - I think it has been going for well over a year?

[E-junkie_Ninja]

I wish I could give you a timeline, but we do not have one currently. Creating the new Admin interface, also requires that we rebuild parts of our back end, so it is a large undertaking to make the change.

[bishophill]

One more request for bitcoin.

[sunnankar]

Here is an extremely simple solution from BitPay that was just released that lets customers pay with bitcoins and get digital products.



Looks like it even lets you handle the digital delivery from your own site so that is pretty cool.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVEBNsJWTHQ



This makes it feasible to sell digital products for less than $0.05.



Using Bitcoin it sure is nice paying extremely low transaction fees ($0.003 per transaction) and not having chargebacks anymore!

[furuknap]

+1 for BTC and LTC support. I would love to see e-Junkie support this!



.b

[zenmagnets_com]

This is no longer becoming a matter of "I would like to see this feature."



More so a matter of "I need to accept bitcoin."



I've been a happy customer of E-Junkie for over 3 years. And to show you guys how happy I've been, I will pay you guys $750 to implement bitpay, which shouldn't be that hard to implement. And so I don't have to switch to foxycart.



If you guys can't implement bitpay or some other bitcoin processor in the future, I can promise I won't continue using e-junkie.

[sunnankar]

@zenmagnets.com, I agree. This is starting to get serious especially with the news of Google Checkout being discontinued. Plus, I am losing significant sales due to not having Bitcoin integrated into the E-junkie cart. Pretty soon it will make sense to just move to Foxycart like you said.



I would love to have either a straight bitcoin or a Bitpay implementation.



I doubt Bitpay is ready for it yet and we could just have the address input into E-junkie forward to a Bitpay account anyway so that would be an easy work around.

[E-junkie_Guru]

Unfortunately, supporting Bitcoin directly would be an extremely thorny proposition for us, as Bitcoin is just a currency rather than a payment processor, and E-junkie is not itself a payment processor that ever handles any actual funds (whether in USD or Bitcoin or any other currency), so for us, supporting Bitcoin would mean supporting a third-party payment processor that supports Bitcoin. From a practical return-on-investment standpoint, this would need to be a payment processor that supports Bitcoin among other payment funding methods such as credit/debit cards.

[zenmagnets_com]

For anybody looking to accept bitcoin, and don't want to ditch e-junkie. Here's a button I made that's graphically compatible with the e-junkie shopping buttons:



http://i.imgur.com/13XiUdd.png



You can stick it to the right of your "add to cart" or "view cart" button, and have it hyperlink to a bitpay cart. At least until e-junkie begins to support bitpay or coinbase directly.



Example: http://zenmagnets.com/index.php?p=15