One of the things the bitcoin ecosystem does not offer is a way to refund transactions. To be more specific, there is no really convenient way to do so. BitPay has been pondering this problem and come up with a potential solution. Any merchant using the company’s service can now issue full refunds to bitcoin customers with relative ease.
It is good to see merchant service providers focus on the bitcoin refund issue. In most cases, one needs the sender’s bitcoin wallet address to send money back. However, this can be quite cumbersome for merchants accepting bitcoin payments. BitPay has come up with a way to circumvent this problem once and for all. Rather than requiring the sender’s address, it is possible to issue a bitcoin refund to an email address.
BitPay Makes Bitcoin Refunds Smoother
All of this functionality can be found on the BitPay merchant dashboard. There was already a dedicated option to issue bitcoin refunds to customers. However, issuing a refund to the address used to pay for an order is not always the best option. Some people pay orders directly from an exchange wallet or an address they only used once. People who take bitcoin privacy seriously will never use the same address more than once, thus a refund to an email address may be the better option.
Merchants can now authorize a refund request by sending funds to said email address. The recipient of the refund will receive an email notice about the payment. They can then provide the bitcoin address manually, ensuring there is no confusion. Moreover, this change will prevent funds being sent to a wrong bitcoin address. Do keep in mind it will still take about two business days to process refund requests.
Anyone who uses BitPay’s merchant services will be quite pleased with this decision. Having less to worry about when dealing with refunds is always a positive development. Moreover, the customers benefit from this change as well. Having the option to determine which address needs to be used to receive a refund is quite significant. It will be interesting to see how the community responds to this change. All things considered, this is a smart move by BitPay.
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