Comment by gibybo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gibybo | Hacker News Reader

Well, I just tried to transfer one of my domains to Namecheap using Bitcoin, but their implementation leaves a lot to be desired.

I filled in my domain, got to the checkout page, and it gave me three options: Pay from 'Funds', 'Credit Card', or 'Paypal'. Turns out in order to pay with Bitcoin, you have to first add 'Funds' to your account. So I click the link to do that, it asks me how much I want to add (I don't know, aren't you supposed to tell me how much I owe?). Anyway, I follow a few pages and finally end up on BitPay's page where it asks me to send a specific number of Bitcoins to their address, so I do. The page recognizes immediately when I have sent the funds, and redirects me back to Namecheap.

Great, now I can find my way back to the checkout page and finally finish the transfer! Except I can't. Despite having sent the funds, they won't show up in my account for another hour (or possibly up to 24 hours). I understand they want to prevent double spend attacks, but this is absurd. We're talking about a $10 domain that they can just revoke if the payment doesn't clear. They have to wait 45+ days for paypal/credit cards to clear, but they give the product to me immediately, and I don't have to go through their ridiculous fund adding process to do so.

I applaud the effort Namecheap and I'm happy to see Bitcoin becoming more useful, but this needs work.

NameCheap actually doesn't have the capacity to revoke domains as they're an eNom reseller. Enom's policy is that once you buy a domain, it's yours. With domains sales being such a low margin business I can understand their level of caution.

I had no idea they were a reseller. It's all the more interesting when you look at eNom's reseller pricing page http://www.enom.com/resellers/benefits-pricingplans.aspx. I hope NameCheap is getting better bulk rates than what is listed.

That's interesting, I didn't realize that. But don't they still have to deal with PayPal/credit card charge backs? Do they think those will be more rare that Bitcoin double spends?

Many people (like myself) keep a fair sized balance on namecheap to make checkouts faster for credit cards in general, so this won't be a problem for everybody.

Same case here, but I was trying to pay with Google Wallet, and I only had to wait for around 20 minutes.

Their interface really needs a make over though. It's like they are trying to win a "Show As Much Information As Possible in A Single Screen contest".

"They have to wait 45+ days for paypal/credit cards to clear"

This is not a thing. There's no concept of 'clearing' when it comes to credit cards; they are authorized for a specific dollar amount or they aren't. If a merchant authorizes $10 for a domain name, it's guaranteed that those funds are theirs (and they're given an authorization code confirming it). They more than likely get the funds in their bank account the very next business day.

The only way the money can be taken back from the merchant is if the consumer does a chargeback with their bank, so the only concern there is fraud.

Maybe 'clear' was the wrong term, but I was referring to chargebacks. Their only concern with Bitcoin is also fraud, since that's what double spends are too.

Also, I happen to be a previous Namecheap customer with a credit card attached to my account. If the Bitcoin payment had failed, they could have just charged my account/credit card to avoid their loss (possibly with some extra legal annoyances, but I don't think there is anything fundamentally wrong with that).

It sounds like that was something with the API for BitPay, perhaps NameCheap will skip the wait in the future and revoke if necessary but the thing that worries me is that maybe the BitPay API doesn't support notifying on pending funds instead of secured funds.

I looked at the BitPay API page (https://bitpay.com/bitcoin-payment-gateway-api) and couldn't tell for sure one way or the other. If it really doesn't, they may want to switch to Coinbase (a YC company that offers a similar service) which I know sends notifications immediately (and status updates as confirmations come in).

However, even with that fixed, it's still an issue that Bitcoin was not an option on the checkout page. I had to navigate somewhere else, then go through the checkout process again just to get back to where I was. I shouldn't have to stop what I'm doing and go through a completely different flow to pay for something.

>Despite having sent the funds, they won't show up in my account for another hour

... and after one hour transactions are marked as "invalid" and you are forced to fill ticket to tech support (which is nonworking either)

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