What steps are required to accept Bitcoin payments in countries where PayPal and similar services are not available?
Payments
Asked by Question Bot02/Feb/20151 answer
1 Answer
F
Faisal Khan
Answered 02/Feb/2015
Technically speaking, it is not difficult to accept Bitcoins. You simply need a wallet to do so. However, to accept it on your site, you would need an equivalent of a service like Coinbase or BitPay to accept the equivalent price of your product in Bitcoins (as offered by the prevailing exchange rate at the time). Once the sale is made, your money (if you choose) is immediately and automatically converted to US Dollars.
On the legal side of things it is not so simple. There are a couple of issue to look at:
In the absence of any particular ruling by the financial regulator, you would be hard pressed to invest in an exchange or gateway to do bitcoin conversions. You can certainly do it, but once a ruling (say against Bitcoins) comes out, you would have to cease operations (as was the case in India and Thailand).
Right now, both Coinbase and Bitpay do not support countries like say Pakistan or India (just to cite two examples). So you would have to make alternate arrangements if you were to sign up with them to liquidate you bitcoins and get your money back.
If you feel comfortable in accumulating Bitcoins only (a move that is usually not recommended due to price volatility) then you don't need to do anything, you can simply put your wallet address and many shopping carts today allow you to accept bitcoins.
On the legal side of things it is not so simple. There are a couple of issue to look at:
- Does the economy that you are working in allow repatriation of funds?
- Does the economy allow foreign-exchange to be held?
- Bitcoin itself would need to be legal in the economy
- You would need an exchange and/or a market maker to ensure that your Bitcoins can be converted to US Dollars (or other currency of choice, similar to what Coinbase or Bitpay would offer).
- Some form of a bank would need to come into play to be able to allow the exchange / market maker / gateway to connect with the local banking system.
In the absence of any particular ruling by the financial regulator, you would be hard pressed to invest in an exchange or gateway to do bitcoin conversions. You can certainly do it, but once a ruling (say against Bitcoins) comes out, you would have to cease operations (as was the case in India and Thailand).
Right now, both Coinbase and Bitpay do not support countries like say Pakistan or India (just to cite two examples). So you would have to make alternate arrangements if you were to sign up with them to liquidate you bitcoins and get your money back.
If you feel comfortable in accumulating Bitcoins only (a move that is usually not recommended due to price volatility) then you don't need to do anything, you can simply put your wallet address and many shopping carts today allow you to accept bitcoins.