CoinGate Crypto Payment Processor Review

CoinGate is a service that allows you to buy / sell bitcoin and also provides a payment gateway with both online and traditional POS options. They use shapeshift to allow the use of “altcoins” including Dash.  Coingate charges a 1% processing fee for using the gateway services.  They allow for withdrawal in fiat currencies through a number of different options including PayPal. I setup an account to see how the shapeshift integration worked and to try to see what the conversion rates and times are going from a Dash payment.  Unfortunately I was told the dreaded “we don’t allow your kind here.” message.  No USA accounts accepted. Pet peeve here … Why do companies use US dollars but don’t allow United States people to use their services?  You can withdraw Euros or US dollars – what do you do with the USD? Just for the purpose of this review I said I “really” was in Mexico so they allowed me to create an account.  But you can’t do much without another “important” process – verification. You have to upload copies of your personal and business identification so I was not willing or able to proceed. CoinGate has a number of “plugins” for online shopping carts – more than most other providers but I did not verify they are “up-to-date” and work with the latest software versions.   They also have Bitcoin Point of Sale apps for Android and iOS.  Looking at the android app it says nothing about shapeshift integration and since the latest update for the app is from Aug 2016 it may well be Bitcoin only. There is a web version of the POS system that you can use to test – it does have shapeshift. As expected it has very simple data entry. (I had no way to switch to USD here) By default you have 20 minutes to pay with Bitcoin – I clicked on the “pay with altcoins” tab and got a screen to pick which coin I wanted to use (just like shapeshift) This is the Dash payment screen.  Excuse me while I do some math to see how much I am paying.  25 EUR = 29.87 USD and that is shown as .09945 Dash which comes to $300.34/D when the “going rate” was $330/D on coincap.io and worldcoinindex.com which means I am losing close to 10% in conversion fees.  Not a good deal for the buyer. The Good Website registration went smooth. Well designed website Number of shopping cart plugins The Bad Bitcoin focus Have to use shapeshift to use Dash Not available in United States Verification for merchant is onerous Conclusion I could not really see all of the functionality of this system.  But the fact that I was not able to do that says that it is not a good fit if you live in the US.  If you are a Bitcoin person living in Europe this may well be a good service for you.