from Hacker News

Show HN: Bitbillpay - Pay any PostBillPay biller in Australia with Bitcoin

by zhoutong on 10/28/13, 12:28 AM with 27 comments

• by chiaro on 10/28/13, 3:19 AM

  Since the service you offer is so simple, why not have the home page BE the bill pay form, with some peripheral explanation boxes? I.e. you navigate to the site, and the first thing you see is the code and reference amount fields etc.

• by jimmcslim on 10/28/13, 4:35 AM

  Further to my response to a comment stating that this does not fall foul of AUSTRAC's requirements, I think it does break the law with respect to the Corporations Act's requirements for an Australian Financial Services License (AFSL)...

  http://www.asic.gov.au/asic/ASIC.NSF/byHeadline/Licensing

  "An Australian financial services (AFS) licence authorises licensees to:

  1 provide financial product advice to clients;

  2 deal in a financial product;

  3 make a market for a financial product;

  4 operate a registered scheme;

  5 PROVIDE A CUSTODIAL OR DEPOSITORY SERVICE;

  6 provide traditional trustee company services."

  I think you are performing #5 above, therefore are breaking the law by operating without an AFSL (if you do have an AFSL, the license number should be displayed on your website).

  Plus consider the Electronic Funds Transfer Code of Conduct...

  http://www.asic.gov.au/asic/asic.nsf/byheadline/Electronic+F...

  Not trying to rain on your parade, just making sure you are aware of the relevant laws you (may) be breaking!

• by cup on 10/28/13, 1:28 AM

  Superb. This is a really great initiative Ryan. Ive had the great misfortune of having to use postbillpay to pay off my numerous speeding fines and anything that can get me around using that broken website is a phenomenal achievement. All the more so when you do it in a concise modern approach by including bitcoins.

  Ill be sharing this with a lot of my friends.

• by ps4fanboy on 10/28/13, 6:37 AM

  Be careful Ryan Zhou is the same person with the sketchy past behind Bitcoinica. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoinica

  Context: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=81581.0

• by lessnonymous on 10/28/13, 1:32 AM

  For those outside Australia, you can pay most bills at the post office (Australia Post) or online via the post office's PostBillPay service. Basically, AusPost act as a middleman between the biller and the customer. But AusPost only accept Australian Dollar payments.

  So from my reading of it, Ryan's project takes a bitcoin payment from the customer, converts it into AUD, then connects to PostBillPay and pays the bill, then send the customer the receipt from PostBillPay.

  Bill payments 1.0: Customer -> Biller

  Bill payments 2.0: Customer -> PostBillPay -> Biller

  Bill payments 3.0: Customer -> BitBillPay -> PostBillPay -> Biller

  It's a great idea .. but I imagine if it takes off, AusPost will implement pay-by-bitcoin in their own service.

• by sepbot on 10/28/13, 1:52 AM

  Are you enrolled to AUSTRAC in accordance to Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act of 2006?