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BitPay - new requirements for hosts/VPN providers etc, given 7 days to comply?
AnthonySmith
Member, Patron Provider
Seems BitPay have self imposed some new regulations, thought I would pop this up here as they have given such a short amount of time to comply.
Thank you for being a valuable BitPay merchant. The requirements for businesses in your industry (VPN/VPS/Hosting/File Sharing, etc.) require your cooperation for submitting certain verification documents regarding your business. Please provide the following by 15 October 2016: Copy of valid, unexpired Government issued photo ID (passport preferred) of the beneficial owner of your business; Proof of business address: Current utility bill (dated within most recent 90 days) OR Current mortgage statement from a recognised lender (dated within most recent 90 days) OR Lease/tenancy agreement - current and in good standing; Proof of business: Official business registration OR Articles of Incorporation;
So I will just switch to another payment processor for BTC because it is a lot less hassle, they have given me very little time during a period where I have far to much work on to consider this a priority with a 5 business days out of the blue deadline.
Thanked by 1DewlanceVPS
Comments
I wonder if this is a general deadline, or they set individual deadlines. I have not received this notification yet.
5 business days is stupid either way, it may be based on volume I guess.
They must be pushing this policy to older customers now? We had to do this with a new account started a few months ago.
Alternatives?
@AnthonySmith: Have you found a replacement payment processor that doesn't require verification of I.D. ?
Bullshit.
I think https://www.coinpayments.net/ does not require ID verification, and they have whmcs module too.
Well, just today I received a letter from them aswell. Seems like they want to force-upgrade me to the 10000$/day plan and then they also want a ton of information from me.
Never had an issue with them before but I'll probably switch if they insist.
Meh, I've been needing to do their upgrade anyway and it's the same requirement. They are welcome to my ID. They won't get a business register though. Taxes are my job, not theirs. I don't have to register my business name where I live. My business is a product of my person.
spectrocoin is a good one too
I personally have those 3 in an email so it's less than 5 minutes to download and submit to them - not much of an issue.
If you are a legit business that shouldn't cause any issues to you though
What's the big deal? I sent my info the day I registered with them before I even had any balance. Also it takes me 5 minutes to get my ID out and a utility bill, not 5 business days.
I am yet to receive this. I've probably already sent them everything listed when I signed up last year... can't remember.
Hmm. Maybe nevermind. I'll submit my ID and see if they'll accept it, but they're not getting this:
"Please select your EIN issuance document or official documentation verifying your SSN."
They want me to attach a photo of my social security card. I believe anyone in the US would join with me and say "lol" in response to that. I might show it in person but it will not be photocopied or submitted to anyone but government.
Let me know who you go with @AnthonySmith. CoinPayments looks nice.
Bitpay just kicked me out
I would advise against giving them your social security number.
I don't mind verifying the business ID etc, I object to being given 5 business days notice on a Friday afternoon.
A bit not understand, 5 business day is not enough to prepare business ID? I was submitted and they approved it in next working days.
Five business days is more than enough time to prepare everything that BitPay requested. However, it's the principle of the matter that I (and I believe @AnthonySmith) have an issue with.
As a B2B, you don't simply ask your customer (whose another business owner) to drop everything and get this stuff emailed through in five days. That's nonsense!
Such ridiculously short time frames show that BitPay are lousy at planning and being inconsiderate. Who's to say that next time they need something from customers, they won't pull this stupid stunt again? Maybe with an even shorter time frames next time?
For BitPay, I think that the following (paraphrased?) saying would be applicable: "Don't turn your lack of planning into my emergency!!"
To everyone who follows through with their protest again this stunt, please don't forget to drop the name of the provider you migrate to as well as your experiences with the new provider.
We went through it as well a couple of months ago. Pretty much same verification as Paypal, I find it normal.
I have not received anything, yet. I guess it's just for the Free plan or Tier 1 ?!
99/100 it would be, its a bit of a nightmare for me right now, I don't keep those things digitally and I am in the process of moving, if they had said 14 days it would be fine even still I think its a bit of a silly notice period.
So in this case its actually easier to use someone else, their service has not exactly been stellar up to this point anyway and the €1000 minimum withdrawal amount adds extra admin work having to move stuff around all the time.
I wouldn't count those eggs before they hatch. I signed up for CoinPayments which has me setting up a wallet and all that jazz. I'm trying to set up a digital wallet through another site now and they want my ID so I'm having to do that. I'm not sure this is any less mess. BUT... CoinPayments does seem like a better place to grow.
Have a look at https://gear.mycelium.com
Signed up for them today, was verified today aswell, now can process 50000$/m, not that I would need such a limit.
mee too , not recived yet.
https://stripe.com/bitcoin
I will just get that enabled in the module and problem solved, I already take stripe.
@AnthonySmith I got your back:
@telephone I wish I was that handsome (and young)
Bitpay has requested us to provide information 3 times so far:
The 2nd one ended up with us being unable to accept payments for 2 weeks. Once they started naming off what they had my 'confirmed address' as and started giving something in Quebec, I got quite angry with them. They suddenly go "Nope, sorry, we had your actual information, that was just a mix up on our end...oh BTW your account is unsuspended".
The 3rd time was a week or two ago when we asked for an account size bump. Each time they require us to send more of the same information even though there's tickets on file with the information stored there. We got tired of it and simply swapped to coinbase at this point.
There is an opensource module for coinbase but we couldn't get it to work. To be fair there's a very likely chance that we screwed up the initial setup and we had our API key enabled for v2 and not v1.
We did buy a module from aspnix I think it was and that cost $25.
Francisco
Giving all your info to Paypal is safe as its a licensed credit institution, regulated and been in business for almost 2 decades. Bitpay is none of those things.
Bitpay is pretty bad recently with all their change in Canada and always less than 5 day notice.