CoinGate is a service that allows you to buy / sell bitcoin and also provides a payment gateway with both online and traditional POS options. They use shapeshift to allow the use of “altcoins” including Dash. Coingate charges a 1% processing fee for using the gateway services. They allow for withdrawal in fiat currencies through a number of different options including PayPal.
I setup an account to see how the shapeshift integration worked and to try to see what the conversion rates and times are going from a Dash payment. Unfortunately I was told the dreaded “we don’t allow your kind here.” message. No USA accounts accepted.
Pet peeve here … Why do companies use US dollars but don’t allow United States people to use their services? You can withdraw Euros or US dollars – what do you do with the USD?
Just for the purpose of this review I said I “really” was in Mexico so they allowed me to create an account. But you can’t do much without another “important” process – verification.
You have to upload copies of your personal and business identification so I was not willing or able to proceed.
CoinGate has a number of “plugins” for online shopping carts – more than most other providers but I did not verify they are “up-to-date” and work with the latest software versions.
They also have Bitcoin Point of Sale apps for Android and iOS. Looking at the android app it says nothing about shapeshift integration and since the latest update for the app is from Aug 2016 it may well be Bitcoin only.
There is a web version of the POS system that you can use to test – it does have shapeshift. As expected it has very simple data entry. (I had no way to switch to USD here)
By default you have 20 minutes to pay with Bitcoin – I clicked on the “pay with altcoins” tab and got a screen to pick which coin I wanted to use (just like shapeshift)
This is the Dash payment screen. Excuse me while I do some math to see how much I am paying. 25 EUR = 29.87 USD and that is shown as .09945 Dash which comes to $300.34/D when the “going rate” was $330/D on coincap.io and worldcoinindex.com which means I am losing close to 10% in conversion fees. Not a good deal for the buyer.
The Good
- Website registration went smooth.
- Well designed website
- Number of shopping cart plugins
The Bad
- Bitcoin focus
- Have to use shapeshift to use Dash
- Not available in United States
- Verification for merchant is onerous
Conclusion
I could not really see all of the functionality of this system. But the fact that I was not able to do that says that it is not a good fit if you live in the US. If you are a Bitcoin person living in Europe this may well be a good service for you.
Thank you for reviewing us! We are very keen on improving, so any kind of feedback is extremely valuable for us.
Looking at “The Bad” we would like to address some of your findings as we do not feel all are correct and true!
Firstly, verification at CoinGate is much simpler than it is with other payment processors. In fact, if a merchant wants to receive payouts in Bitcoin, we require NO verification – and we are one of the very few gateways that allow this. For EUR/USD payouts, we ask our customers to provide us three documents for compliance reasons: ID, business registration and address proof. We guarantee to verify the docs within 24 hours, which is probably the quickest on the market. In the meantime, customers can start accepting payments without getting verified and complete the procedure when they are ready. So we simply cannot agree that our “verification for merchant is onerous”!
Secondly – the U.S…. It is indeed a sensitive issue and we are really sad to say no to so many businesses from the States due to the complex regulatory environment. Perhaps this will change in the future.
Finally, Dash, Bitcoin focus and ShapeShift. We have already replied to a comment on Reddit, and I would like to quote on it again:
Our team is quite familiar with the benefits of Dash as a cryptocurrency in comparison to Bitcoin. Going the native road would, of course, be really cool and beneficial from the speed/price standpoint.
Still, a number of our merchants are opting to receive payouts in Bitcoin, whereas some are receiving EUR/USD payouts without zero risk of price volatility. Introducting Dash as a direct payment method would thus make the payout procedure way more complicated for both the merchant, and for us. Typical website owners aren’t yet that familiar with cryptocurrencies and convincing them to give Bitcoin a go is already a daunting task. Introducing Dash would mean that things would get even more complicated.
Right now, we believe that we are maintaining the right balance of usability and convenience. The customer who wishes to pay with Dash can do so, in spite of the fact that Bitcoin is involved. Meanwhile, the merchant can also be at peace that his payouts are not overly complicated and are remitted in a single currency.
Nevertheless, we see your point and fully understand it. We have had a number of internal discussions about accepting cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin natively – simply because it feels like a right way to do things and utilize all the benefits that different protocols offer. We are optimistic to expand this possibility further quite soon, perhaps as soon as in the coming year.
So, again, thank you for the feedback. We we try to make our service satisfy both sides – the merchant, and the customer!
Company isn’t replying to our email, it’s been 5 days and we requested our withdrawal and they don’t seems to reply now. Unavailable totally. It’s a total shame, transaction unconfirmed and no personnel to help and solve it.
They put very low fees to send transaction, we were happy earlier but they seems ignoring now when comes to withdrawals.
Hm so the company is offline?