It's not just the fees, but the payment processors. You need a contract with them and you need to integrate with their systems at high cost. This is something you normally solve with yet another middleman, like a bank or Stripe.

In contrast, Bitcoin is permissionless. Just install the software and receive payments just like anyone else. That's what something born in the Internet age looks like.

This, we went with Stripe before but apparently hosting is too high risk and (they claim) their banking partners did not want to do business with our little Irish startup. No such issues with bitcoin

> little Irish startup

Are you the owner of Ezfile/Filecloud by any chance? If you are, I'm actually quite curious to discuss payment processors with you. Last I checked, you're using Amazon gift cards and Bitcoin. Have you had any luck getting access to credit card processors? Also, what fee per transaction would you consider to acceptable from a CC processor for your category of website (with the ability to let users pay by subscription)?

Yeah, except BTC transaction costs are skyrocketing due to the blockchain size being too small. So basically, Visa will continue being Visa, and BTC will refuse to compete against it.

Honestly, the proper competition vs Visa is ACH-based transactions like Dwolla.

Can anyone comment with regards to Mike's statment about bitcoins current fees being higher then cc fees. What is the driving factor behind this? Does the cost of mining directly raise the fees?