HM2K

Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer cryto currency and we’ve been working on a free service for bitcoin users to help with accepting payments.

Coinb.in is what is known as a “Bitcoin eWallet Service” with an easily accessible API aimed at web developers, to allow the acceptance of bitcoins and to process the payments automatically and anonymously from our network via an unbranded interface, at no fee, without having to run a bitcoin client.

Coinb.in works by providing your customer with a unique wallet address, which is linked to your account. The coinb.in service then checks the Bitcoin p2p network at regular intervals. Once the payment has been confirmed, you will receive a notification by email and the transaction data will be sent to a script of your choice, which can then be used to process the order and populate your database.

There are a number of different ways to implement Coinb.in. The most simple and least complex way would be to implement a “buy it now” button, which does not require the user to register first.

For example, on a small project we run, called Gallush the following code could be added to a product page as a bitcoin “buy it now” button.

<script src="http://coinb.in/merchant.js"></script>
<script>
    var cb = {'uid':'2',
    'amount':'3.00',
    'fromcurrency':'USD',
    'description':'Starter shell. 1 month',
    'ref':'I10',
    'requestemail':1,
    'callback':'http://www.gallush.com/btc-payments.php'};
</script>
<a href="javascript:;" onClick="coinbin(cb);">Buy it now!</a>

Here’s an example: Buy it now!

The html and javascript above, would generate a link that would require no site registration because when it is clicked it will request that the visitor enters in their email address before they can continue, because of the &requestemail parameter being set.

Once the user has provided their email address, coinb.in will convert 3 USD to the equivalent value in bitcoins, and return this value plus an address to make a payment to.

The &description parameter  should contain a full description of the purchase and the &reference parameter in our example contains the item id (I10).

Once the user had made a payment, and it has been confirmed 6 times, all of the above data and additional transaction data is then sent to the callback URL provided so that it may populate the database and process the order accordingly.

Coinb.in comes complete with, examples, documentation and an API that can output the results into several different formats including XML and JSON objects

Now the question is, would you buy web hosting with bitcoins?