This Ars Technica article indicates that Stripe will no longer accept bitcoin at the POS because of high cost, long delays, and failed confirmations:
“Stripe is one of the most popular ways for small online organizations to accept credit card payments. And in 2014 it became one of the first major payment processors to support bitcoin payments.
But a lot has changed in the last four years. The bitcoin network has become a lot more widely used, and with popularity comes congestion and high fees. Last month the median daily transaction fee—which had been just pennies prior to 2017—peaked at $34. This figure has declined substantially this month, but is still around $5. That’s a lot if you’re just trying to buy a cup of coffee.
So on Tuesday, Stripe argued that it was ending support for bitcoin.
“Bitcoin has evolved to become better-suited to being an asset than being a means of exchange,” writes Stripe’s Tom Karlo.
“Transaction confirmation times have risen substantially; this, in turn, has led to an increase in the failure rate of transactions denominated in fiat currencies,” Karlo argues. “By the time the transaction is confirmed, fluctuations in Bitcoin price mean that it’s for the ‘wrong’ amount.”
As a result, Stripe’s customers have become less and less interested in accepting bitcoin payments. “There are fewer and fewer use cases for which accepting or paying with Bitcoin makes sense,” Karlo writes.
The Bitcoin infrastructure has been struggling to align competing factions to improve transactional throughput but it has been difficult, if not impossible, to align competing perspectives on how such enhancements should be made. As the success of Bitcoin as an investment vehicle drives transactions and the bitcoin value, the use of Bitcoin as a payment method becomes more problematic. These problems must be a disappointment for anyone that expected Bitcoin would prove to be a currency outside the purview of government intervention.
Overview by Tim Slaone, VP, Payments Innovation at Mercator Advisory Group
Read the quoted story here
