[Bitcoin-development] Proposed BIP 70 extension

[Andreas Schildbach]

I think it should be made more clear what's the reference price for the
discount. In Germany, we generally don't use credit cards but rather
"EC-Cards", which is already much cheaper. Or maybe for some merchants
the only alternative is cash, and they would still offer a Bitcoin discount.

Also, currently PR are created by the payment processors afaik. How can
they know what other payment option the merchant provides and what's the
conditions? Maybe we should first solve the signature delegation problem
so that the merchant can create the request.

Although I'm sure this feature will get abused, I (as a wallet author)
would be willing to give it a try. I agree with Jeff that the name of
the field should start with something like "marketing".


On 06/24/2014 03:27 PM, Mike Hearn wrote:
> Coinbase have started allowing merchants to set discounts for purchasing
> with Bitcoin. Seeing an individual discount is not very motivating as
> they tend to be small. Seeing them stack up over time can be more
> motivating because it feels like free money. Many businesses exploit
> this effect with loyalty points, etc. Bitcoin should do this too - show
> the user how much they're saving by using Bitcoin instead of credit cards.
> 
> I suggested to Charlie Lee (who pushed this through at Coinbase) and
> Stephen Pair the following minor BIP 70 extension:
> 
> 
> message PaymentDetails {
>     // Size in satoshis of any discount provided by the merchant ONLY
>     // because the user chose to pay using Bitcoin or other similar 
>     // digital currency. Other kinds of discounts, loyalty bonuses and 
>     // so on should not be recorded here, rather they could be mentioned
>     // in the memo field. This field exists so wallets can show the user
>     // a running total of how much money they have saved by avoiding
>     // credit cards and bank payments; the goal is to encourage people to
>     // use Bitcoin. Putting other kinds of discounts here would make the
>     // running total calculated meaningless; so don't do it!
>     optional uint64 currency_usage_discount_size = 8;
> }
> 
> Wallets would then be able to persist this data to disk and compete on
> cool visualisations for how much money you saved over time.
> 
> We haven't formalised how to extend BIP 70 yet, that's my fault. We
> should do that. In the meantime, what do people think of this proposal?
> 
> 
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