- Bitcoin payment service implements new QR code payment technique
- Move forces developers to adopt protocol or be left behind
Bitcoin payment processing giant BitPay has been criticised for its recent decision to implement the BIP70 Payment Protocol. The protocol, which was developed in 2013, uses QR codes to avoid overpayments, underpayments, erroneous fees and man-in-the-middle attacks during digital money transfers.
The problem, however, is that only a small proportion of the wallets provided by BitPay’s merchant services currently support BIP70. Moreover, concerns are now being voiced that the protocol will create legacy public key infrastructure dependencies along with a heightened risk of AML/KYC surveillance and examining of money transfers.
In a nutshell, BitPay stands accused of leveraging its already huge power to force Bitcoin wallet developers to adopt its protocol or be left beyond the reach of many merchants.
The developers of Samourai, a bitcoin wallet with strong privacy features, called for users to insist on their privacy and resist “this kind of arrogance”. They also announced that they have begun contacting all the vendors they partner with who use BitPay as their payment processor, notifying them of their intention to switch to other vendors because continuing to use BitPay is “no longer tolerable or feasible”. Others, they hope, will join with Samourai.
The criticisms come at a moment when BitPay could seriously do without any further negative publicity. It has already come under considerable public pressure after it recently limited its Bitcoin money transfers to a minimum of USD $100 (AUD $127), and then backtracked while barring all non-US credit cards.
The Samourai developers added: “We absolutely do not support BitPay in aggressively using their dominant position of market share to bully wallet providers into supporting their business plans or bully users into a system that degrades their privacy and the fungibility of bitcoin as a whole. BitPay should focus on repairing their image and brand after the cataclysmic failure of the Segwit2x Fork they helped architect, instead of reinforcing their image as an out of touch bully looking to hijack the network for their own gain.”
