[bisq-network/bisq] Add SWIFT (int. wire transfer) as payment method (#1789)

Manfred Karrer notifications at github.com
Fri Oct 19 15:40:10 UTC 2018


I am wondering if we should add international wire transfer (SWIFT).

There are some issues thought:
- Banking fees are rather high (50-100 USD) which makes that very expensive if used with low trade limits (about 400 USD atm for new accounts).
- Fees are not clearly determined and receiver will also get charged by a fee. Furthermore some banks allow to define the fee model. There are 3 options: 'Sender pays', 'receiver pays' or fee is 'shared'. I think default is shared but users who manage to set that to 'receiver pay fee' can save much money on cost of the peer.
- It seems that the receivers address is required which adds some privacy and security risks to the traders. But not sure if the address is verified. Many users change real address when moving house and do not update address at bank (often the bank webpage does not support that anyway).
- Transfer takes 3-5 working days but can take even longer
- It is not very clear to me how to find out if an intermediary bank is needed. I assume the banks figure it out themself and add on demand intermediary banks (and increase total fees by that) or it need to be defined by the users, but that will prob. not work as you don't know in advance the combination of the sellers and buyers banks.
- If the bank cannot complete the transfer more undfined costs may apply to the sender. 

So all in all it seems like a can of worms and thats why we never added it but I am still wondering if we should offer it and make it very clear to the user which risks and issues are connected to it. There are countries with no Bisq market developed yet and that payment method could help to connect those isolated users to trade between them. Also in such countries they pay a huge premium anyway on LBTC or other exchanges, so the high fees might be not an issue for them. It could also help to bootstrap a national tranfer market once there are a few traders using Bisq there.

I think chargeback risk is very low, so that is a good part.

We would need to use a high trade limit otherwise the costs are way too high (25% of the trade if the costs are 100 USD for a 400 USD tx). We could allow 0.25 BTC for new accounts (about 1600 USD) then the 100 USD fee would be "only" 6%. Once the account has 2 months then its 1 BTC and then the fee with 1.5% is actaully pretty reasonable.

Another problem is how to deal with the fee mode. There is an incentive that the sender tries to let the receiver pay the fee if his bank offers that option. So maybe the best would be that we use that as the default case. The extra costs for the fee for the Fiat receiver can be priced in the offer price.   There can be though then cases where the sender cannot select that and then the seller has the disadvantage. 

Arbitration with the fee issues migth become an issue. But I think if we use the model that the reciver pays all fees and communicate it clearly that fees are not determined it should be ok. User has to be aware of an extra risk factor here. 
A sender who pays more fee because his bank does not allow selection of the model or is instranparent with fees has to complain at his bank. 

@alfsbs What do you think?

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