ClearXchange - General information summary - Help us find out what's the deal with these guys

Payment methods
1

So, we keep getting about one dispute a day regarding clearXchange (cXc). Their business terms aren’t clear and we’re still figuring out what we can do to reduce the bad user experience and workload for arbitration.

At the moment it seems that txs always work when one of the two trade partners has an account with one of the following banks:

  • Bank of America
  • Chase
  • US Bank

Possible fix:

Make sure in the client that one trader has an account with one of the three banks. If you don’t have one of these, offers from other people without account are greyed-out and can’t be taken.

I made an ugly visualization of what should be possible and what not :wink:

blob.jpg718×305 76.1 KB

Is it safe to say that EVERY user that wants to use cXc MUST have an account at cXc, to rule out all kind of dispute cases involving non-cXc users? Additionally they must have finished the verification process at cXc and their bank before accepting a trade. In >the settings and there’s just a small link next to the bank account settings that one has to select to begin the process

I’m adding to this post later as I have to run now.

Please provide your experience and point out errors in this summary. I think cXc is a good fit for Bitsquare/bisq when we can make this work.

Thanks to @nrwd2vcvv @ddawson @Earthlark @jkepler and everyone else who gave input already.

2 Likes
2

Well, the option is called “clearXchange” for a reason, so yeah, I think it’s safe to say that.

I think your diagram is missing self-links. E.g. is NMB-CXC to NMB-CXC possible? I think it’s been established that it isn’t. Or am I wrong? Being in the NMB-CXC class myself, that’s the case that concerns me. Well, that and NMB-CXC to 7MB.

(Quibble: “3B” should be “3MB”.)

3

I appreciate the diagram you put together, and the attempt to iron out the issues some people have had. I have a Capital One P2P bank, therefore I’m automatically part of clearXchange (CXC). I haven’t had any issues with CXC trades using bitsquare, either buying or selling.

Is your data behind your diagram based on people telling the arbitrator which banks they had when bitsquare trades have gone to the arbitrator? I’m curious to know your data source, since I’ve not experience the problems other have had.

Thanks!

4

Your bank is one of the 7 member banks so (according to the diagram) you should not have any problem sending money. Do you know if anyone has tried to send you money from a non-member bank?

You asked for data source. I think one of my posts was used as a data source (though not the only one). My data source was clearXchange customer service, who I called after I tried sending money a couple of times from my fully verified CXC account, and the service threw an error saying that I could only send to one of the 3 banks mentioned above.

The diagram explains quite accurately what I was told by the CXC customer support person I talked to.

Hope this helps to clarify :slight_smile:

5

Thanks @lightsout for the summary.

I need to know the following to be able to implement support to avoid future problems with clearXchange.

  • Is a CXC verification required in any case or just in some of the following cases?

If a CXC verification is required in any case we have those combinations:

  • 3MB <-> 3MB : OK

  • 3MB <-> 7MB : OK

  • 3MB <-> NMB/CXC : ?

  • 3MB <-> NMB/NCXC : ?

  • 7MB <-> 7MB : ?

  • 7MB <-> NMB/CXC : ?

  • 7MB <-> NMB/NCXC : ?

  • NMB/CXC <-> NMB/CXC : ? (probably NO)

  • NMB/CXC <-> NMB/NCXC : ? (probably NO)

  • NMB/NCXC <-> NMB/NCXC : NO (just to be complete ;-))

If a CXC verification is required only in some case we have to add those variations:

Please US traders help us to fill the open questions, otherwise we have to remove clearXchange from the list of payment methods in the next release. Unfortunately there are not much other good alternatives as well for USD!

80% of the disputes are caused by clearXchange failure and the user experience falls negatively back on Bitsquare.
Hard to believe that there are no better payment options in the US available and clearXchange seems incapable to explain their complicate setup to their customers.
Luckily we have SEPA in Europe…

UPDATE:
I think there might even be more complications if sending and receiving is treated differently (e.g. 7MB -> NMB/CXC is ok, but NMB/CXC -> 7MB not). I leave it for now until there is more info.

6

Could we get also a summary of other USD payment alternatives?
If we have one or two others maybe we really can kick CXC out. It seems to become really complicate to support and hard for users to understand when it works and when not.

7

I will try to fill in some blanks from my experience so far.

In order to be able to use CXC for anything (or at least to send money, I assume the same case applies to receiving money), CXC requires a verification involving:

  • Verifying email

  • Verifying bank account with trial payments (meaning: they make two small deposits and you have to tell the system the amounts in the deposits)

  • And (I think you have to do this too, but don’t remember for sure) complete your profile with full name, address, and phone number

As for your questions, from what I understood in my conversation with CXC customer support:

  • 3MB ↔ NMB/CXC : ? (allowed)

  • 3MB ↔ NMB/NCXC : ? (don’t know)

  • 7MB ↔ 7MB : ? (allowed, I think)

  • 7MB ↔ NMB/CXC : ? (allowed, I think)

  • 7MB ↔ NMB/NCXC : ? (don’t know)

  • NMB/CXC ↔ NMB/CXC : ? (NO)

  • NMB/CXC ↔ NMB/NCXC : ? (probably NO)

Did I miss anything? Hope this helps at least a little

8

Maybe a more lengthy explanation (or a link to an explanation in a wiki or something like that) could be added to the FAQ on the bitsquare site?

9

Yes but first we need to really understand how it works. Can any customer request all that info from them? We need exact infos otherwise we get again problems. They should ask all the questions above. Including if there is a difference for sending and receiving and if so split up the combinations even more (will get crazy complicated - that’s why i doubt if it will be really possible to communicate that to users).

10

I will try to get what CXC details I can next week. Since I rely on CXC, I’d like to do what I can to help the devs figure out exactly how it works.

However, as a regular Bitsquare user who gets paid in the US but lives and works in France, I really hope CXC doesn’t get dropped in the next release. Buying bitcoin via CXC in the US is my only option with Bitsquare since i can do it via my bank’s online interface, but I can’t use the US ATM or postal money order options, as I’m not physically present there. Otherwise, I’ll have to buy on Coinbase, and buying through them is a hassle–they make you wait nearly a week from the time you send them fiat before you can use it to buy bitcoin.

1 Like
11

Thanks! Yes I also would hate to drop it. We just need to get a clear picture when it works and when not. Atm there are way too many disputes because of cxc.

12

Are there any other US online payment methods you could recommend?

13

I’m not quite sure if this would be a doable option, but I’ve heard a little bit about BrainTree which looks pricey (2.9% + $0.30 per trade), but could possibly be an option in the mean time?

14

After having a quick look, I don’t think BrainTree service would work.

They are a Paypal company and I assume they use the same standards and payments would be reversible. I didn’t see anything remotely useful for Bitsquare.

Do you have an idea how BrainTree could be used? Maybe they offer a certain service that can’t be charged back and with verifyable payments?

15

Yeah, I saw that it was under PayPal and that made me wonder a bit about if it’s doable in this type of situation, but then I saw how it helps businesses accept payments like Bitcoin through Coinbase. I figured since it helps process those types of payments that there would be some sort of option to prevent reversible payments from occurring; though I really don’t know much about BrainTree and only read through a little bit of it myself.

16

As it turns out, since my email address is already registered with my CapitalOne bank account, I can’t create a ClearXchange (cXc) account with the same email address-- cXc says I already have an account.

I think part of the problem Bitsquare users may be having with cXc transactions from cXc member banks could be that cXc member banks don’t seem to label their person to person payments options as cXc. In my bank, it’s simply listed as “P2P payments”. So, perhaps in Bitsquare’s user interface it could list the cXc member banks and tell folks with those banks to simply send a P2P payment.

1 Like
17

cXc sucks totally on how they communicate to their clients!
Will try to add some more text… Thanks for the info… Maybe we need an extra cXc customer care center and send them the invoice for that :wink:

18

The thing that sucks and is stupid, in my opinion, about this whole thing; is that if you are trying to make it easier to make P2P payments between different banks with cXc, why would you allow the banks to call their payment system something completely different than what the other bank is calling it? SurePay, P2P, Quickpay, etc. …

I’ll post here what I posted in another thread what I found in the help section under my Wells Fargo SurePay faq/help section, under the “How do I receive money” section that I think clears up some understanding for everyone (hopefully):

When someone sends you money, you will be notified at the email address the sender used to send you money. If this email address has not yet been registered, you can update your existing contact information, or register the new email address. Your mobile number will not be eligible to receive transfers until it is registered with WF SurePay or clearXchange.

clearXchange is a network of banks that allows customers of other financial institutions to receive money with WF SurePay.

Customers of member banks can use their bank’s online banking to register, and customers of non-member banks can go to clearXchange to register. Current member banks in the clearXchange network are: Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Capital One, Chase, US Bank, FirstBank, Frost Bank, and TD Bank

So hopefully this just means that if you are signed up and able to send P2P payments between people who are in your own bank, then you are therefore good to go to send payments to other people at Wells Fargo, BoA, Capital One, Chase, US Bank, FirstBank, Frost Bank, and TD Bank.

1 Like
19

One other quick piece of information I stumbled into with ClearXChange (cXc) - apparently they’ve got a $2,000 per day transaction limit, and $10,000 per month. I couldn’t find exactly how they define a day.

However, cXc users ought to be warned in bisq’s UI that they can’t make individual trades greater than $2,000 against USD or cumulative trades more than $2,000 per day or $10,000 per month. Otherwise they might not be able to pay their fiat to a bisq trading partner and might lose their security deposit.

1 Like
20

Ah yes good point. But I don’t take security deposit away in such cases. But better if people know about it.