On another thread, it looks like ACH and wire transfers are going away, but I would like a way to have a direct payment from another bank to my bank. I don’t think that the wire transfers are too expensive if a larger order like $3000 is made. I know large orders are not possible at the moment, but maybe in the future?
I’m also not clear as to how risky the ACH deposits are because bank account names are available if someone tries to chargeback multiple people. Is this just naive of me to think a scammer would not what his name recorded?
IMHO, cash deposits have more risk associated with them than ACH direct deposits because the buyer is practically anonymous.
$3000 will never be permitted in Bitsquare in one trade because that would attract scammers with stolen bank accounts.
Unfortunately bank transfers are never 100% safe against chargeback. But if the risk/cost relationship is ok we should be fine.
For the current limit of 1 BTC a 20-30 USD fee for WIRE would be too expensive IMO.
There are no plans to extend the trade limit much further without additional protection tools (which might get introduced later like an extra locked up deposit for the BTC buyer to proof reputation…)
We have options to block a user who has done a chargeback with ACH but I prefer to not be foreced to use those tools.
Our policy is that the payment method must have low chargeback risk, so ACH is not an option as well as Paypal.
I orientated on LocalBitcoins and there is also no WIRE and ACH payement method in the US, though they are less critical with chargeback as they support PayPal which has very high chargeback risk (but they have ID check and reputation).
Cash deposit is used widely in LocalBitcoins and it seems it works sufficiently well.
The sender of the USD needs to send a photo to the receiver by email with the paper receipt and write NO REFUND on it and tear it in 2 parts. That is what LocalBitcoins traders require usually, so that seems to work.
If we find out that it is not safe we will remove the payment option again.
Unfortunately there are no good P2P payment options in the US.
Any other recommendations are very welcome!
I agree there are not many “cheap” or “safe” ways to do peer-to-peer trading using US banks, but I don’t think that should stop bitsquare from allowing the option anyway. It will just force a trader to use a platform like localbitcoins.com instead. The seller can always price in chargeback or fraud risks.
If there is a way how to prevent ACH when offering the bank transfer option I could leave WIRE but I don’t know how to force that people don’t use ACH instead. Please let me know if you know how to distinguish between them. If I can define in the payment account setup clearly that the payment method can only be used with WIRE and not with ACH I will keep WIRE.
LocalBitcoins has a different concept. Using high risk payment methods requires additional protection (ID verification, repuation) and as far I researched they are not used much and often there are much more buyers then sellers for those because the seller takes the risk.
I think opening such methods is just looking for troubles and create damage to the reputation of Bitsquare if people would get scammed.
There is probably over 10 wire transfer offers for USD in the USA at this time. Other offers probably come and go.
Maybe the bank transfer category could warn the buyer not to use ACH? Warn them that if the buyer uses ACH then they may forfeit their bitcoins in arbitration! Maybe an ACH specific category could hold the escrow for a long period of time, like a week? Perhaps this would mitigate the chargeback risk.
For my bank, Wells Fargo, they offer a different routing number for wires and direct deposits. I gave my wire routing number for my most recent trade on bitsquare, but the buyer was still able to send a ACH direct deposit. So, are the routing numbers interchangeable? I don’t really understand why that would be.
I would be a shame if bitsquare could not solve this problem, because I don’t think other marketplaces are going to do a better job in terms of security and privacy.
I am not so familiar hwo the banking system works exactly in the US and despite we have requests for help open more then a year nobody provided us with clear info.
As in your case it was able to do an ACH on your WIRE account, that does not sound to be easily to solve if at all.
I got many tickets recently with US trades in the dispute and I guess most where because either people did not understand themselfes the difference between ACH and WIRE or they canceled because of the high WIRE fee.
Warnings along will not be sufficient, as the BTC seller is the risk taker and if he is not aware to receive by ACH instead of WIRE we have a problem.
I will release prob. tomorrow the new version and cannot postpone it much as I am travelling afterwards.
But if we find a clear solution how to prevent ACH I am willing to add WIRE again.
As said before, LBTC has another security model, which would not fit to Bitsquare (ID verification).
If the seller doesn’t know the difference between ACH and WIRE, it is just a matter of education. I didn’t know what the difference was a few days ago but I learned.
Why not have a long escrow time to protect against chargebacks?
When someone wires or ACHes money, hasn’t the sending bank already ID’d their customers? If you are worried about stolen bank accounts, localbitcoins.com does not protect against that. There is no ID system that is required on localbitcoins.com besides an email, unless they have changed something.
A typical time frame for a chargeback is 120 days. I think that no one would use it. Especially with regards to volatility, it makes no sense.
Localbitcoins has a reputation system that makes the difference. This is not totally out of the way for Bitsquare, but not planned atm.
Edit: Regarding wire transfer: I agree, if one could distinguish between ACH and wire transfer it could be kept or readded as payment method. Maybe a warning pop-up about the high fees would reduce the number of disputes.
