The Bitcoin Bank

If you saw an ad for a bank like this, wouldn't you want to open an account?

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Open an account with The Bitcoin Bank today, and take advantage of the following features:

Consumers:

- Send any amount of money worldwide, to anyone, instantly for 1.5 cents;
- Shop online at any website without having to share your personal information;
- No monthly maintenance fees;
- Access your money from anywhere, anytime;
- No accidental overdrafts;
- No cash advance fees;
- Instantly updated transaction records;
- Send money to any organization without restrictions.

Merchants:

- No transaction fees;
- No chargebacks;
- Your money will never be held from you for any reason;
- No setup fees;
- Transactions will never be blocked.

The Bitcoin Bank is managed by the laws of mathematics, and will never be subject to government or corporate regulation. The Bitcoin Bank will not invest in risky assets or derivatives. It will always be 100% capitalized and does not operate under the principles of a fractional reserve system.

To get started, read our Simple Bitcoin Guide.

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Foreign Transaction Fees from the Comfort of Your Own Home

Image from Finland for Thought

This latest breach of trust is brought to you by Citibank. From The Consumerist:

"...when I reviewed my credit card bill I noticed a foreign transaction fee of $11, which stood out because I haven't left the country for about a year. When I called them, they said it was for two separate charges: a design contest I'd paid for on 99 Designs, and a domain I'd purchased from Yahoo, which outsources its domain [management] to a firm in Australia. I made both purchases in US dollars, and on 99 Designs nothing even indicated that it's foreign-based until I dug around on the website."

The charges occurred because Citibank thinks doing business online with a foreign company is the same as doing it face-to-face, regardless of the currency used or whether the website is up front about the location of either their or their payment processor's offices. What's a "foreign transaction fee" anyway? Isn't a currency exchange fee enough?

Also, since when did Citibank start running ads for Bitcoin? Because, basically, that's what this is...

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Bitcoin vs. Google Checkout

Since this is a Google Blogger Blog, I have quite a few options when it comes to adding "gadgets" to the site. Currently, I use the "Poll," "Recent Comments," and "Popular Posts" gadgets, among others.

While perusing through some other options, I came across the "Support My Blog" gadget, which:

"Adds a Google Checkout Support Button to your page. Use the support button to enable your readers to support your blog with contributions."

I've already got a Bitcoin Tip Jar, but it would be nice if non-Bitcoiners could leave tips too.

Let's do this!

"When you use Google Checkout to process your sales, you'll be charged rates as low as 1.9% + $0.30 per transaction. With Google Checkout, there are no monthly, setup, or gateway service fees."

That's reasonable, I guess, but if someone wants to leave a $0.10 tip, it's going to cost me $0.30. Seeing as most of the tips I receive are under $0.50, that's not very good.

But wait, what's this?

"An additional 1% fee will be assessed on transactions where the merchant's country is different from the buyer's billing country."

Well, since I'm from Canada, that's like, most of the time.

1% isn't very much though...

"With 10 days notice, we may also charge higher transaction processing fees to merchants that incur excessive chargebacks or otherwise pose financial risk to Checkout."

I'm not selling anything, so that shouldn't happen. But what if someone wants to screw with me?

"In cases where you are found liable for a chargeback, you'll be charged the full amount of the chargeback plus an additional $10 chargeback fee."

To hell with that!

Thanks for nothing, Google.

P.S. Please don't close my Blogger account. You guys are awesome, just not awesome payment processors.

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Send Money Overseas!

I just stumbled across this ad:

Wow, great. That's only $13.49 more than Bitcoin. Let's see what we get when we click on the ad:

"You’ll save up to 5 times more than other service providers." Jesus! What are the other guys charging?

Still don't think there's a place for Bitcoin?

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Banks to Circumvent Government-Imposed Fee Limits

The Wall Street Journal reported today that Bank of America, following in the footsteps of Wells Fargo, among others, will begin charging a monthly fee to customers who choose to use a debit card, in an effort to circumvent new fee limits imposed on banks by the US Government.

Bank of America Corp. plans to charge a $5 monthly fee for its debit-card users, joining a number of other banks that are pressing their customers to help recover lost revenue from new regulations.

Bank of America and other debit-card issuers, including J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo & Co. and Regions Financial Corp., are trying to offset an estimated $6.6 billion annual revenue hit stemming from new limits on so-called debit-card swipe fees.

The limits, finalized by the Federal Reserve Board in June, take effect Saturday and will reduce the amount of money merchants pay banks to 24 cents per transaction from a current average of 44 cents. Bank of America has said it expects the caps to erase $2 billion in revenue annually.

In other words, "if we can't gouge the merchant, we're going to gouge the consumer."

Wells Fargo said it will charge a $3 fee for debit and ATM card customers in Nevada, Washington, Oregon, New Mexico and Georgia starting Oct. 14. Like Bank of America's, Wells Fargo's fee applies when a customer makes a purchase with the cards and not ATM transactions.

Brutal.

J.P. Morgan has been testing a $3 fee in a small market in Wisconsin since February. Regions Financial and SunTrust Banks Inc. also have added monthly fees for some debit-card customers.

Keep 'em coming.

Citigroup Inc. said last week it was raising fees on certain checking accounts but would not charge fees for using debit cards.

Yup.

Trish Wexler, a spokeswoman for the Electronic Payments Coalition, a trade group that represents Visa Inc., MasterCard Inc. and several large banks, said the new fees are "unintended consequences that have come up as a result" of the Durbin amendment.

Unintended consequences? Unintended consequences? How does anyone fall for this b.s. anymore?

In other news, Bitcoin fees continue to hold at zero.

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