Multiple Currency Support

[cakey]

This is hard.

There are a number of issues here:

Do people have to choose a primary currency, or can people give and receive multiple currencies simultaneously. Do we work entirely in USD?

At what point do we convert the currency? A primary currency means that conversion can happen on payday, and we can have lower effective rates by cancelling out USD->Euro and Euro->USD for example. However what if I'm happy to receive multiple currencies, such as bitcoin and don't want to incur the extra expense of conversion. If we work entirely in USD then clearly we are throwing away money when a european tips a european, or someone wants to tip in bitcoin.

To support giving in multiple currencies, we need to be able to connect multiple accounts? How do we display this on a user's page, how do we aggregate these values together?

How do we deal with variable conversion rates, do we try to get the best deal, or suck it up and accept what the figure is on pay day?

It seems we either go with a solution that is very complicated, or one that is inefficient and annoying.

This is the main reason I feel bitcoin support isn't trivial and should not be a priority.

Related issues:
#13
#14
#126

Want to back this issue? Post a bounty on it! We accept bounties via Bountysource.

[chadwhitacre]

Reprioritizing from ★☆☆ to DevX ★, because we should just look at refactoring under the hood on this ticket (concrete currencies should be added under separate tickets).

[chadwhitacre]

Actually, this ticket describes UI questions. Can we disentangle the two (backend and frontend)?

[domenkozar]

Let me explain a use case for this ticket.

Motivation

Collecting funds in Europe with gittip means we're doing unnecessary forex.

Donator (EUR) -> gittip (USD) -> paypal (USD) -> our bank (EUR)

Proposal

It would be enough for our use case to mark that we're collecting funds in EUR. Anyone donating would convert to EUR currency and from then on keep in in EUR.

In Kiberpipa hackerspace, we have only EUR donors.

[zbynekwinkler]

I think we can all agree that it would a good thing to have. However, right now the only way of payout out of the US is paypal or bitcoin. When we have a clear path towards automated payout to at least one other country except US, everyone is going to be a lot more motivated to implement the multiple currency support. It is not going to be hard, it is only going to be a lot of work. I guess we block this on #126.

[chadwhitacre]

@zwn I'm proposing that we go the other way around: let's make room in the db for multiple currencies, and then start implementing account connections that allow funding in this or that currency. First dig the cisterns, then dig the channels to fill them. Or something. :-)

[zbynekwinkler]

@whit537 How do you motivate someone to dig the cisterns when the water is nowhere in sight? I'd be the first to start digging iff there was a reasonable proposition to #126.

[domenkozar]

@zwn, @whit537 it would be possible to get whole payments chain just in EUR with balanced/paypal, right? What's missing here?

[zbynekwinkler]

@iElectric Paypal is not supporting us officially. Once they notice we do use them, they most likely shut the account down. Balanced is not working outside of US as of now.

[chadwhitacre]

@zwn You don't think MangoPay (#891) or Trans-Pay (#417) are realistic?

[chadwhitacre]

Multicurrency is also necessary for proper btc integration, which is something we already half-support.

[zbynekwinkler]

MangoPay needs a new company and we do not have one and are not doing any steps to get one. TransPay is also blocked on something I quite don't understand but also, it seems stalled just as MangoPay. If all that is needed for TransPay are some more form fields, let's do it. Are we doing it?

As for btc integration, I don't think money-as-commodity is workable idea for the long run so I'd like to spend my energy on something that I personally see as more useful.

[chadwhitacre]

Are we doing it?

You asked for water in sight, not underfoot! ;-)

[zbynekwinkler]

You asked for water in sight, not underfoot! ;-)

I am very short sighted ;-)

[zbynekwinkler]

So, now that the coinbase support is on the way, lets talk 😃 . If we add support to payin and payout through balanced using bitcoin, how will it work? Is bitcoin going to be just another number for us so we can completely ignore that it is a digital currency? Where are the bitcoins going to be stored when my balance in gittip will be non zero? Coinbase, balanced, gittip?

[chadwhitacre]

Is bitcoin going to be just another number for us so we can completely ignore that it is a digital currency?

Yes. (No?)

Where are the bitcoins going to be stored when my balance in gittip will be non zero? Coinbase, balanced, gittip?

@steveklabnik? I guess I had figured it would sit in Balanced, like most of our USD does currently.

[steveklabnik]

Currently, yes, the BTC stuff goes to USD before you get it. In the future, you would denominate which currencies you'd like your balanced escrow to be in.

And yes, hopefully that answers #2 too.

[chadwhitacre]

Currently, yes, the BTC stuff goes to USD before you get it. In the future, you would denominate which currencies you'd like your balanced escrow to be in.

Okay, so even if we implement multi-currency on our side, that doesn't help until Balanced has it.

[steveklabnik]

Well, there's this: even before that, you can have multicurrency for Bitcoin things. Because you'd make the charge in Bitcoins, but get the result in dollars.

[zbynekwinkler]

Well, there's this: even before that, you can have multicurrency for Bitcoin things. Because you'd make the charge in Bitcoins, but get the result in dollars.

I thought that is what we are adding in the now open PRs, aren't we?

Okay, so even if we implement multi-currency on our side, that doesn't help until Balanced has it.

Any time frame for this (I mean for keeping escrow in multiple currencies)?

[steveklabnik]

I thought that is what we are adding in the now open PRs, aren't we?

Right now, a tip is denominated in USD, but paid in BTC, which gets converted to USD and sent to you.

Multicurrency would allow a tip to be denominated in BTC, paid in BTC, which gets converted to USD and sent to you.

(And in the future, allow a tip to be denominated in Euro, paid in Euro, which gets converted to USD and sent to you.)

It's the difference between "I tip you $0.25 in bitcoin" and "I tip you 0.0001 bitcoin."

Any time frame for this?

We're not committing to anything. Not super near future.

[zbynekwinkler]

Thanks for the explanation. I think the break point (at least for me to get interested) is multiple currency escrow - either within balanced or by using a different provider (mangopay, transpay).

[chadwhitacre]

Dropping this back down to TeamX.

[dcht00]

Tnx for the ticket @iElectric

Operating only (mostly?) in Europe, we have the same case and are looking closely at developments in this field. As our contribs grow, the overhead of conversion will have to be taken seriously and we might need to find a different solution to not loose money :-(

[slaivyn]

+1
I am very interested in being able to receive EUR because I would like to be supported via Gratipay for a software I am developing but the users are mostly very not used to deal with USD so it could be a real obstacle.
I have just created to subjects to bring my contribution: #3134 and #3135 :)

[chadwhitacre]

Interesting that Uphold (cf. #3870) doesn't hold all of its liabilities in the currency native to each liability (as it were):

[nobodxbodon]

Re-ticketed to gratipay/inside.gratipay.com#974 for further discussion and planning. After deciding on concrete implementation plan and dev work starts, this will be reopened for tracking purpose.