Add user defined Payment Method on Bisq about proposals HOT 15 OPEN

Hi @flix1 thanks for creating this proposal.

I am conflicted about this one.

Positives are all the reasons you mention.

Negatives, I think there will end up being trades for PayPal, CashApp, Venmo, trades that end up being reversed once the multisig has paid out.

Also people selling gift cards that do not work and no way for mediator to know which trader is telling the truth.

I am not certain if Bisq 2 that at least comes with 'trader reputation' would be a better medium to experiment with new payment methods and those being used regularly could then be added to Bisq.

I would be a little concerned seeing users post negative Bisq experiences on Bisq about being scammed by weaker custom payment methods. Bisq has a great reputation and I would not want to see scammers on the platform.

from proposals.

I agree that the risks mentioned exist. Let's see how testing goes, it's only for a few weeks.

We have been playing it safe for a long time on multiple fronts at the expense of growth. From time to time it's good to do limited experiments to see if our caution is excessive.

We need data to confirm or disprove our assumptions. A/B testing, short duration experiments and similar projects can provide that data. Otherwise assumptions just become set in stone. They key is to keep experiments cheap.

This one in particular I expect to be extremely cheap: Limited in time, 0 dev time and very little support time.

By using the F2F payment method, which before we started only had 9 offers, we can very easily monitor it and keep it contained.

In any case I don't expect people to use this much in already liquid markets like EUR, USD, BRL with well established payment systems. Where this flexibility is needed is in Africa, China, South América...

from proposals.

We could also permit that custom payment option only for countries not covered sufficiently by existing ones. I doubt that in EU, US, GB, AUS, CAN we need it, there it might be actually a larger risk that we attract scammers with little benefit as basically everyone has one of the offered payment methods.

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For example, a lot of effort was put into adding multiple payment methods for India, including PayTM, RTGS, UPI NEFT... they have hardly been used.

It's much better to allow users to take the initiative and once a payment method is proven popular, then you codify it.

from proposals.

As for how to display the custom payment name in the offer book, it's the same mechanism that is used to display the city name in F2F trades. Replace "The city will be displayed in the offer" with "The payment method will be displayed in the offer".

from proposals.

Maybe we get a few broad categories like Local Instant payment method, similar to National Bank Transfer. Are there ways to categorise the new payment types that users want? We wouldn't want a complete free for all with people making PayPal offers.

from proposals.

I agree with @w0000000t and @pazza83. I think some more generic payment types but are still not a free for all.

It is tricky with +100 countries and currencies each with there own newer payment types, waiting a development cycle to get new payment types in is definitely not ideal for adoption.

from proposals.

RakutenPay being tried in Japan

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I would be for trying it out a custom payment method that excludes established markets: EU, US, GB, AUS, CAN, BRL, and known payment methods that allow reversals.

Here is a list of payment methods considered for adding to Bisq that were rejected as unsuitable:

• Apple Pay
• ATH Móvil
• Boleto
• Cash App
• CashU
• Chipper
• Curve
• Daviplata
• Efecty
• Gold Avenue
• Google Pay
• Jeton
• M-Pesa
• Neteller
• OkPay
• Payeer
• Payonner
• PayPal
• PingIt
• PostePay
• Ria Money Transfer
• Venmo
• WebMoney
• Wirex

from proposals.

Actually thinking a bit more about this... we already have a workaround!

We can use F2F payment method as a sandbox and include the local payment method in the city field.

It's not "officially" sanctioned by the defined trade rules... but we can ask mediators and devs to make an exception for small markets for testing.

from proposals.

Maybe we get a few broad categories like Local Instant payment method, similar to National Bank Transfer. Are there ways to categorise the new payment types that users want? We wouldn't want a complete free for all with people making PayPal offers.

Part of the point is that we don't know. We only found out when we start talking to local markets. Letting users take the initiative helps the info flow... we would only have to look at the offer book to see what is being used.

But sure, having some broad categories like "Other - instant" and "Other - slow" could work.

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As a test it looks like we are going to be experimenting with the workaround (F2F) until Market Day:

https://twitter.com/bisq_network/status/1633093747306115072

Data will be very useful for this proposal.

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My opinion is the same as @pazza83 and actually while checking this I went first through a "hey nice idea, really like a Columbus' egg!" phase, then straight to "...but this will open the userbase to a whole lot of scams, and the support team will get the heat for it"

from proposals.

Negatives, I think there will end up being trades for PayPal, CashApp, Venmo, trades that end up being reversed once the multisig has paid out.
Also people selling gift cards that do not work and no way for mediator to know which trader is telling the truth.

We can mitigate that by showing a warning popup with mentioning known unsafe payment methods and clearly state that mediation and arbitration might not be able to figure out who has behaved incorrect, thus all funds of boths users might be lost (similar to MAD just that the DAO gets the funds).

I am not certain if Bisq 2 that at least comes with 'trader reputation' would be a better medium to experiment with new payment methods and those being used regularly could then be added to Bisq.

I would be a little concerned seeing users post negative Bisq experiences on Bisq about being scammed by weaker custom payment methods. Bisq has a great reputation and I would not want to see scammers on the platform.

As @flix1 mentioned we could run it as experiment. If it turns out to not work well we can remove it again. I guess we have been too conservative in the past (e.g. not adding trader chat due concern of scam risks, F2F trade,...). There are different regions like Japan which would even allow reversible payment methods because the culture is just very different and ppl are extremely honest. Maybe we can maintain a list provided by the filter data of countries which are blocked for the new custom payment methods. I guess that could help to selectively tune it so that it brings benefits to the markets where we need it without opening the doors for scammer. We could set a clear metric for that, e.g. if there are more then 3 unresolveable arbitration cases (or clear scams) per 3 months period we block that country.

As said above it need to be clearly communicated that this option does not provide the same security as other payment methods. Users might need to click a checkbox to be aware of the risk that if the case cannot be resolved without doubt by the arbitrator that there will be no refund. Also we could limit the amounts to < 500 USD, though that might be bad for e.g. Japan market - the account age witness should cover the limits already.

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It looks like Argentina is also joining the test. They were the ones most asking for payment methods, so I'm happy to see that they are taking advantage of this experiment.

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