In November of 2011, I announced the arrival of OKPAY onto the Bitcoin scene, which at the time was seen as a huge step toward the consumer popularisation of Bitcoin. OKPAY was, and still is, the first well-established payment processor to integrate Bitcoin into their services. Since the original announcement, OKPAY has continued to increase in popularity, becoming one of the top 10,000 sites on the Internet, and hence a member of our prestigious Bitcoin Ladder. OKPAY is also one of the top 1700 sites in Russia.
Its competitors from within the Bitcoin community, BitPay, WalletBit, and MtGox have obviously kept the pressure on OKPAY to remain competitive, and OKPAY has done just that by recently dropping their BTC to USD conversion fee to 2.50% from the 3.00% that it was back in March of 2012. BitPay is currently charging 2.69%, while WalletBit charges 2.75%. Mt.Gox is of course competitive with the straight BTC to USD conversions, but they also charge 2.50% on top of their trading fees for any other currency. OKPAY's 2.50% rate also holds for anyone wishing to withdraw their BTC proceeds via the OKPAY MasterCard debit card.
Uniquely, OKPAY has also aligned itself with two of the major Bitcoin exchanges, Mt.Gox and BTC-E, allowing users to withdraw funds from the exchanges to their OKPAY accounts, and ensuring OKPAY gets the best possible Bitcoin exchange rate.
OKPAY's service has drawn in hundreds of thousands of users, thus giving them an advantage through economies of scale, something BitPay, WalletBit, and MtGox may find difficult with which to compete, though they're obviously doing a great job of staying competitive, themselves.
The beauty of these payment processors is the fact that they allow a merchant to accept Bitcoins with zero risk, with fees very much competitive with, if not lower than, those of PayPal, Visa, and MasterCard. Add in the absolute zero chance of chargebacks, and you wonder why there are any merchants out there that are not willing to accept Bitcoin in addition to the usual currencies.
As always, it's exciting to see the Bitcoin payment processor space continue to grow with the Bitcoin economy, inevitably forcing traditional payment processors (*cough* PayPal *cough*) to either get with the times or potentially lose significant business.
How many merchants does OKPay have signed up specifically for bitcoin processing? How many bitcoin transactions have they processed so far?
ReplyDeleteThis is a bit misleading because there is an additional 1% charge for most currencies on top of 2.5% at OKPAY. This is effectively 3.5%.
ReplyDeleteWalletBit on the other hand is only 2.75% (0.89%+1.89%) for all 42 of its supported currencies. This means WalletBit is still the most affordable way to accept Bitcoins worldwide. www.walletbit.com/pricing
You are not quite right. You're talking about a specific case of a wire withdrawal which is just 1%, but in other cases, such as vithdrawing via OKPAY Mastercard debit card, it's 0% charge.
DeleteWhen you working with OKPAY, you also get their brand and name, that you and your clients can trust.
DeleteAny other small companies can disappear with all your money :)
Do any of these processors allow credit card payments as well? What I'd like is a solution where I can accept credit cards as well as bitcoin, and where I get paid in bitcoin from the processor. (Potentially after a long delay to remove chargeback risk in case of cc payments)
ReplyDeleteOKPAY allow credit card processing via LiqPay
DeleteBut LiqPay payment pages are only in Russian D:
It is written everywhere that they have over 10 000 merchants, though I can not tell for sure if they all accept bitcoins.
ReplyDeleteI know that credit card payments are not available in OKPAY system. Point is that OKPAY payments are non-reversible, whereas Visa or Mastercard money can be refunded at any moment by several reasons. Besides, OKPAY provides many more account loading options available here: https://www.okpay.com/en/account/ope...sit/index.html
ReplyDeleteGood bye
I don't know where you heard Mt.Gox is charging 2.5% on top of their conversion fee for anything other than USD. I contacted them and they said they charge 2.5 EUR for wire-transfer withdrawals in EUR.
ReplyDeleteClick on the "2.50%" in the article and scroll down to the second last question:
Delete"Q. Are there any other fees charged when trading in multi-currency?
A. No. However, please be advised that there is a 2.5% premium when a trade involves orders in different currencies."
What OKPay needs to grow, is more affiliate programs that offer it as a payout option. New users might be reluctant to try a new system and transfer money into the system, but once they learn they can get paid in OKPay funds and spend them like they would spend Paxum or Redpass funds (using their Mastercard), they usually are more open to the idea.
ReplyDeleteDO NOT USE OKPay. I sent them $6,000 of company funds to load onto an exchange and they proceeded to hold the funds and ask for more documentation. I provided the requested documentation and they stopped responding.
ReplyDeleteI repeat - DO NOT USE OKPay. They are SCAMMERS and will make up reasons to hold your funds.