Investigate Stripe and Bitcoin

[tonylampada]

There's a world beyond paypal, like

• Stripe
• Bitcoin

Maybe they provide some kind of "Parallel payment" like Paypal does. Need to investigate further.
See also this related feedback

[tonylampada]

Another related feedback: internal error when I tried to pay

[tonylampada]

I was thinking about starting this issue next, but I just read a blog post posted by mk-fg in [internal error when I tried to pay].
I'm not so sure anymore.
Will wait a litlle longer and do other issues first.
I'll come back here later

[mk-fg]

To be fair, I don't see how that issue with bitcoin matters much for the individuals involved or the project - if someone already has BTC (presumably it's a small amount, too) and is willing to dispose of it that way, why stop them?
I'd be worried if I were a large bitcoin-holder (e.g. BTC bank), otherwise meh ;)

Stripe sounds neat, but it's for businisses, not individuals, and PayPal works for processing payments from a VISA / MasterCard from any part of the world.
It might be bad for an individual receiver (as I've noted in the aforementioned ticket) and maybe bad for business (don't know much about that), but I think all it's limitations are only related to transactions in PayPal internal currency, not mediated payments from regular plastic cards - pretty much everyone can pay through PayPal from a local bank account.

So I'd argue what's lacking in the project is the link to the receiving individual in countries where PayPal doesn't work that way.
I also think that most of such individuals might actually be used to work as a freelancers already, otherwise they probably won't have much inclnation to do paid work outside 40+ hours they already do every week.
Such individuals are also likely to reside in countries with less-developed economy / IT-ecosystem, where it's much harder to find an interesting local job.

With that in mind, I'd look at existing payment solutions in place and being used on the net job marketplaces, and at least for ex-USSR countries, I believe two overly-dominating ones from these are Skrill and Payoneer.
These were tested over time, processes of working with them, risks and limitations are well-known and documented for any individual country (by the aforementioned class of people from these).

So, if most folks who have the incentive and are used to work that way might already have accounts in these systems and cards to withdraw money from them, why not just let them do so?
Imho if anything, these (in a sense - whatever oDesk / Elance / vWorker work with beside PayPal) should be a priority, not any exotic wth-is-it alternatives for the same PayPal-nations, like Stripe.

Just my .02 BTC ;)

[zooko]

FWIW, I'm very enthusiastic about Bitcoin. My open source project receives donations from all over the world in Bitcoin, which we could then turn around and spend on sponsoring bounties, if we wanted. (That decision is actually out of my hands, but instead in the hands of the Tahoe-LAFS Software Foundation, but they have indicated that they like the idea of sponsoring bounties.)

As an individual, I find it easy, fast, cheap, and gratifying to make a Bitcoin payment directly to my intended recipient. I used to donate through Flattr a lot, but it requires a bit of hassle, prior commitment, and fees to refill my Flattr account every month, so I've let it lapse. I really don't like using Paypal. I'm not sure why not. "Political" reasons? Discomfort with exposing my credit card or bank account to Paypal? In any case, I pretty much never donate to anyone using Paypal (or Dwolla, or -- nowadays -- Flattr), but I donate to every deserving person/org that I see who accepts Bitcoin. ☺

Anyway, while I think MK-FG's criticisms of Bitcoin's long-term macro-economics are actually valuable criticisms (if a little bit overstated/overgeneralized), I don't think they matter for this use. People have Bitcoin and want to give it. Other people want Bitcoin and are willing to write software. Freedomsponsors.org should facilitate those people syncing up with each other, ASAP! ☺

[mk-fg]

As I find wording of blog post posted by mk-fg and MK-FG's criticisms of Bitcoin's long-term macro-economics in the comments above increasingly confusing, at the risk of repeating beginning of previous comment, I'd like to clarify: post is certainly not written by me (I'm not that knowledgeable about neither bitcoin nor economy) and should be interpreted as a point in the original context of "Unfortunately, whole bitcoin economy apparently has the same problem"; I agree with @zooko about this particular use-case.

[zooko]

Oh, gee, I'm sorry. I totally thought you wrote that essay about Bitcoin macro-economics. Will go read it again and figure out who to credit/blame for it...

[tonylampada]

Thanks for this this discussion guys.
I will do BTC next. This seems like the easier next step.

opened #78

Now I need to get some details down regarding user experience. Any help there is much appreciated

[tonylampada]

Interesting issues around this subject:
apparently, paying out internationally is a very hard problem to solve:

• withdrawals outside the US, a.k.a. international payouts gratipay/gratipay.com#126
• support international / non-US accounts balanced/balanced-api#23
• Provide IAT (international ACH transactions) balanced/balanced-api#44
• go through Payoneer approval process gratipay/gratipay.com#481

[mk-fg]

tl;dr:

• Payoneer rejected gittip application.
• "payout in bitcoin" ticket #310 on gittip still unresolved, but seem to be moving to "success" outcome soon.
• International payment for balanced is an open question and doesn't seem to be moving at all.

Addon:

• New bountysource project incarnation has this resolved pull for bitcoin: Ea coinbase google merge bountysource/core#13
• Had similar payment-methods discussion on #bountysource (freenode), and there were no objections to bitcoin.
• Bitcoin is as simple to use here as Payoneer, as local btc exchanges support a lot of local payment methods, and even my afk social network has miners who will trade bitcoin personally and privately, in cash.

So, really, BTC (as a transaction-handling network, so value fluctuations or "joke" arguments just don't apply) seem to be a low-hanging fruit from my perspective at this point.

[tonylampada]

Closing this issue. Stripe and Bitcoin have been investigated. :-)