# Last edited on 2014-07-21 20:46:18 by stolfilocal
# NOT POSTED YET

Rephrasing, the customer of Dell (say) who has USD but no BTC now three choices basically: 

(A) pay USD by bank transfer, 
(B) send the USD to Coinbase by bank transfer, and then Coinbase sends USD to Dell; or
(C) pay USD by credit card

We agree that (A) is inherently cheaper than (B), and (B) is cheaper than (C), yes?  If people cared only about cost, they should choose (A) over the other two.  

One may object that, when given only choices (A) and (C) people usually choose (C), presumably for convenience, safety against bad merchants, whatever.   OK, but since (B) is even less convenient and more risky than (A), why would they choose (B) over (C)?

Right now Bitpay and Coinbase are very tempting for merchants, because the fees are zero or very small for them.  BitPay's basic plan (above the "free trial" one) charges 30 USD/month flat for purchases up to