Accepted country

If I want to buy BTC, why is it necessary to specify accepted country of the sellers ?
I’m not in SEPA, but I’m able to pay by wire everywhere in the world.

Witch option should I use for "international SWIFT payment ?

1 Like

We don’t support international transfer because it is usually very expensive and slow. But if there is strong demand for it we can consider to add it.

If your offer is the one with specific banks (All) with Hongkong, that offer will not work. If you use specific banks you need to add the bank names (All is not recognized so nobody can take it).

@Lobster. I have this same problem. I am in Australia. I want to be able to participate internationally. SWIFT is the only way I can do it from here.
@ManfredKarrer I disagree that it is “very” expensive and slow. Slower, admittedly, than BTC but I can do it online at a cost of about 10 USD and it should show in recipient’s account as quickly as any other bank transfer.

I really would like to give Bisq a chance, but now it seems I will have to defund my account because the platform is useless for me! How can I make it functional? I would love to trade in the Euro market which seems to be the most active. I have no problem in sending Euros online.

1 Like

Yeah, some countries really don’t have another option. SWIFT is sometimes the only way to go.
If you live in EU or US, you have better alternatives, but these two make minority of the world, at least population wise.

Maybe adding it as an option wouldn’t be much of an effort. There are definitely quite few whole countries that would benefit from this a lot.

1 Like

Yes, I will consider to add it. What are the mandatory data fields for a SWIFT transfer? I never used it. Do you know about the chargeback risks?

@alexej996 @ManfredKarrer Thanks for responding guys. This message has been edited because I didn’t do enough due diligience on my first effort…

The mandatory fields are SWIFT and IBAN . These are already nicely covered under the payment method “National Bank Transfers”. You could practically just duplicate that template and rename it as “International Bank Transfers”.

But you will need to make a couple of changes:

  1. The major required change is removal of the restriction to the “taker” scope regarding specified countries. This restriction needs to be removed in order to allow a SWIFT maker to make an offer that can be selected by any taker in any country.

  2. In the National Bank transfer module the bank details change according to the choice of geographic area and country. These automatic changes should not occur with an INTERNATIONAL Bank transfer. The fields would be the same as for Austria, Belgium and Germany although the maximum characters allowed in the BIC/SWIFT and IBAN fields may need to be extended to the maximum specification (if they aren’t already).

I believe the above two changes would make it workable. I am prepared to trial it for you.

Chargeback risk: SWIFT is the acronym for Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. It is the standard protocol for international commercial bank transfers. The funds are cleared at the time of sending and are available upon appearing in the taker’s account. In my view chargeback risk is nil.

1 Like

Thanks a lot! Do you know how often correspondence banks are required for int. payments? As far I have seen with my few int. payment that was often the case as not all banks seem to have direct connections to all other banks.

@ManfredKarrer Thanks again for responding.

Brief answer: 1. Correspondent banks are used in the majority of IMTs (international money transfers). 2. Most banks do not maintain many or any direct connections with foreign banks.

Clarification: there is some ambiguity around the terms “correspondent bank”, “intermediary bank” and “correspondent account”. Most big banks maintain direct relationships with chosen correspondent banks (usually other big banks domiciled in important currencies) where the transferor bank holds a “correspondent account” in the appropriate currency. This simplifies the IMT process.

In a perfect scenario the payee is a customer of the correspondent bank and the transfer can occur practically as fast as a normal national bank transfer. But more often the payee is a customer of another bank and a further national bank transfer is required.

There are legitimate concerns regarding time delay and additional fees. These problems are ameliorated if both parties “sign” an acknowledgement that the transaction is likely to take longer than usual (say up to five days) and that all bank fees are the payer’s responsibility. To overcome the time cost an IMT offer may need to be pitched at a more attractive price than competitive offers.

It is important to me that an IMT offer is open to all takers, and that all makers are available to IMT takers.

1 Like

I’m opening an international bank account in the future. Is there anything during the selection process that I should look for in the bank? (To make it compatible with Bisq)

@0x0x0x It depends on when and where you plan to open your international bank account. Until Bisq introduces a SWIFT option it seems to me that you are pretty much restricted to a bank in USA or EU. And you probably will not be able to find a functional way to trade between the two. Bisq is not currently “international bank friendly”.
@ManfredKarrer you have said you will consider to add SWIFT. Realistically, what time-frame can you put on this?

1 Like

There is no schedule set for the next release, but might be in about 1 month?

Yes, Manfred. This issue needs to be dealt with as a matter of urgency. This more a fiat/crypto on-boarding exchange than an inter-crypto trading one. To summarize the 3 issues: i. fraud problem, e.g. credit card charge-back possibility; ii. unpublished (unpredictable) transfer costs especially at destination & intermediate banks, which can lead to lower amount received than was published, e.g. for wire transfer; iii) Transfer delay can be huge leading to drastically changed market condition. This last one is acceptably dealt with as at now, the 6 days could narrow in future. What is not clear is why certain SEPA transfers between EU countries are often blocked, with predictable fees, no charge-back & 3 days’ delay max? The programming aspect of validating transfers can be done if needed. All banks have option to input IBAN (EU Account No.) or BIC (SWIFT universal bank ID) for destination. To get the length of fields for validation, check: http://www.differencebetween.info/difference-between-swift-code-and-iban-code . But the different codes are not really the problem, but issue 2. Maybe, let everyone ask their bank (check it’s website) for wire transfer costs when setting up their bank account details. Penalize wire transfer methods by taxing a 10% or $5 flat margin. Such fees will then be added to the crypto cost…

Yes good points. The unknown fees are very common as far I have seen. As well as the duration. Can take up to 2 weeks. Not sure if chargeback is a big risk here, I thought its even harder to chargeback than national transfers. But no solid data for that opinion.

1 Like

Banking transfers will improve e.g. by using xRapid, which does not need vostro-account relationships between all banks, thus eliminating intermediate banks which can take fee cuts without informing transaction parties. The other unknown fee is currency exchange rates (e.g. $$ to £ or €), with banks often taking a direct fee cut or giving an implicit lower rate than market one. So in order to implement inter-operable payments methods, we need to incorporate an automatic exchange rates table which is a standard deviation of volatility above market rates! Market rates (e.g. https://www.oanda.com/currency/live-exchange-rates/EURUSD/ ) plus smallest currency unit (cent) should be fine.

It all sounds like a can of worms to support intern. payment. There was also not really much requests so far. I would keep that back until we see that there is sufficient demand and maybe there will be some fintech companies like Transferwise which replace the normal banks, which are just so terrible crappy that it is really super surprising that they still are in business.

@cosmasta 1. Fraud risk: Minimal chargeback risk with IMT (SWIFT) 2. Unpublished transfer costs: No problem if the contract maker acknowledges responsibilty for such costs or clearly delineates, in writing, the terms of trade. 3. Transfer delay: If you’re saying that Bisq currently allows for a 6 day delay I think this should be adequate for SWIFT transactions. 4. Currency exchange rates: I think you are over-complicating this. I don’t see why you would want to change from current practice.
@ManfredKarrer Are you saying Transferwise are crappy or the banks?
I am surprised that Paypal don’t provide an option to minimise chargeback risk. I will try and talk to them this week. They are a very fast option on the front-end.

I referred to Banks. Transferwise is an interesting option to add some day but require more effort.

I would like to purchase from hk hsbc will this be possible in the future?

You can use national bank transfer. International transfer is not planned for now due too many issues (see above)