Bitcoin has seen dramatic growth over the last few months. Major sites are now accepting Bitcoins as payment for goods and services. These include Wordpress.com, Namecheap.com, and OKCupud.com, with more jumping on board every day. There are many advantages to Bitcoin for merchants. Please add support for Bitcoins!
Please let me know if I can answer any questions about Bitcoin.
Thanks for your consideration!
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I just referred a friend to Ting. She's moving over from Tracfone and had the hardest time finding a way to pay for Ting, as she doesn't have any credit cards or bank accounts. She does use Bitcoin, though, and would have liked to see an option to pay Ting with Bitcoin. (We even investigated buying Amazon gift cards with Bitcoin through Gyft and paying Ting through Amazon, but Amazon gift cards only work when purchasing directly from Amazon. sadface)
Also check out http://www.bitcoin.org
I expect Ting might consider that if Sprint & Verizon can be convinced to accept Bitcoin as payment from Ting.Verizon is a voice roaming partner for Ting.
Otherwise, Ting would need to finance your Bitcoin experiment with US Currency to pay Sprint & Verizon for your services used.
Actually, the BitPay service allows the merchant to receive their payments in their local currency by direct deposit on a daily basis. Ting would never have to touch the Bitcoins if they didn't want to.
https://bitpay.com/bitcoin-direct-deposit
Coinbase provides a similar service, allowing merchants to cash out their Bitcoins into USD the next day. https://coinbase.com/merchants
For the time being we'll be sticking with our current billing options, though anything's possible in the future.
This would be really nice. Plus I think you'd be the first mobile provider to offer service payable in Bitcoin. The Bitcoin community has been waiting for such a service too, so there's that. Also, Andrew, you'd be able to offer payment in Bitcoin, but receive payment in USD through a service like Bitpay (they're currently the Paypal of the Bitcoin world).
You should make an intern investigate! Ha ha.
I know this thread is old, but it would be amazing if you guys would consider accepting bitcoin. Alternatively, many people who use bitcoin will buy gift cards from Gyft using bitcoins...
I think you should reconsider this request. Since the original request was made, bitcoin popularity and adoption has skyrocketed. Ting could be the first legitimate US cell phone carrier to accept bitcoin. This would result in a massive amount of new business as there is an entire community of thousands of people who are just waiting to pay for their everyday needs with bitcoin.
Your recent blog post mentioned T-Mobile replicating some of the things Ting has been doing. T-Mobile could gain a competitive edge over Ting by accepting bitcoin. Ting really needs to beat T-Mobile to it.
Thanks for reading!
Ditto what Patrick said. Beat the crap outta t-mobile :)
I'll pay with bitcoin, when it's an option. Ting will save money compared to what they're paying now to process a credit card transaction.
Accepting bitcoin isn't something we're currently working on, however it might be something we would consider down the road. We'll keep you posted!
An ideal solution may be to partner with CoinBase. One of the difficulties with Bitcoin as a service business is being able to use automatic payments given that the customer has to explicitly initiate the transaction. By using CoinBase, Ting would be able to automatically bill a user via bitcoin and still recieve USD directly. Thus Ting would be able to not have to really mess with holding, spending, or using bitcoin, they would simply receive USD directly. And with only a 1% transaction fee it will likely be a fair amount cheaper than your existing credit card processing. I'd imagine given how competitive your rates are, there's a fairly slim margin that you already operating on. This would definitely give you a bit of an edge here. And of course you could always require that a credit card be on file as well for a backup in case the users BTC transaction is denied. I would most definitely pay ting with BTC!
Consider that if Ting accepted Bitcoins:
1) no 3% credit card fee / chargebacks
2) no personal information to pass/store on a bitcoin transaction (think Target Stores breach)
3) You will rally in quite a few new customers being the first cell phone company accepting Bitcoin
I'm not sure you all at ting.com are ready for the explosive growth and exposure your company would face if you started accepting bitcoin. With Overstock.com experiencing $120,000 in there first 24 hours of accepting bitcoin, and TigerDirect somewhere around $500,000. Ting is probably not setup for the kind of growth that would come. You might have to hire a couple new people to keep up. Even though payment options could be fully integrated in a day or two, and you'd never even have to touch a bitcoin, the growth potential is really the problem. You would be making to much money, and stealing to many customers away from the major providers it wouldn't be fair. Youd be liable for taxes on all that extra income as well. no one wants that. right?
Also with all this animosity lately about apples removal of bitcoin related wallet apps. I think we a perfect storm of dissatisfied customers ready for a change. Again, to many people would be ready for your service, i don't think you could handle it.
Perhaps sometime in the future when the 1st mover advantage has passed and all the major providers have already taken steps in that direction, perhaps then, as the fires have died down a bit, you might accept bitcoin as payment so as not to have to many customers and remain a small and manageable force.
Best of luck to Ting!
I'm a big fan!
Starting an account with Ting isn't something I'm currently working on but I'll start an account the minute i get word you accept bitcoin. Probably before then actually, :) I really like your service. Looking forward to it.
I use Ting because they awesome and quite affordable. However, I would happily switch to another service provider, even if their plans and service are far worse, simply for the ability to pay with Bitcoins. Therefore, I really, really hope Ting becomes the first mobile service provider to accept bitcoins. I love you guys, and don't want to switch.
I would like to see Ting be the first phone service accepting Bitcoin. It probably would bring in more users than TIng can handle at the moment. They need to take advantage of this opportunity. Count me in.
+1 for bitcoin payments. I am sure the guys at coinbase would be more than happy to help with the integration. And as others have said, it can be done with zero exchange risk.
What you should probably look into then is using Bitpay to get it into some form of real currency. Bitpay takes in the bitcoins and then will send a payment in real money to the place you actually want to buy from. Since Ting uses credit or debit cars for their recurring monthly billing, if you could find a place where you could buy a prepaid debit card, that might be possible to use on Ting then.
I would pay in BC
A competing Sprint MVNO just announced this week they are accepting Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ðogecoin.
Newegg.com and Dell announced this week they are accepting Bitcoin also.
There is no reason for any merchant to not accept Bitcoin (says a Dell computers rep, Dell started accepting Bitcoin last week.) Partnering with someone like Coinbase makes it dead easy. Bitcoins can be instantly converted to USD if you prefer, so ~ 1% fees and no risk.
"no reason...to not accept"
"no risk"
Except that there are some reasons and some risk.
What reasons and what risk?
There are no risks to accepting Bitcoin. The "middle-man" merchant, such as Coinbase, assumes the risks for the client (Ting, in this case). The client (Ting) simply gets paid through the "middle-man", who converts the Bitcoin directly into cash for them.
All of the risk, then, is on the customer to secure their Bitcoin, which they are most likely doing anyway if they are already holding Bitcoin.
Convince Amazon Payments to accept Bitcoin and Ting will have that capability. Ting focuses on cell phone service, not financial services.
Paul, if they are instead using a middle-man to take in the Bitcoin and pay them in actual currency, then they are not actually "accepting Bitcoin". It's like those attention-grabbing headlines about someone who supposedly "bought a Tesla with Bitcoin!". After a few more days, the details came out. The car dealer had been offered it and said "no way", so the buyer used Bitpay to convert it to US dollars, which then went to the car dealer, so it wasn't exactly bought with Bitcoin after all.
So if anyone wants to use Bitcoin, they can convert it and put it into a bank account, and then let Ting draft it from a debit card on that account. And GO!
Every large company that accepts Bitcoin currently does it through a middleman. In the future eliminating that middleman may be beneficial, but these companies are obviously not ready for that step yet.
Rocky, not everyone has or wants to maintain a bank account. Bitcoin is anti-establishment and it plays directly into the desires of people wanting to avoid banks, or debit/credit cards.
Of course they are accepting Bitcoin. The consumer uses BTC to purchase the product or service. This also saves the merchant from 3% CC fees and chargebacks, and instead incur a ~1% transaction fee with Coinbase. Whether the BTC is converted to USD is up to the merchant. Either way, they are still accepting Bitcoin as payment from the consumer.
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