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Software Technology

Top causes of system downtime and how devops prepare to avert a crisis

These last few weeks have been a challenge for devops teams everywhere. For months everyone watched as the novel Covid-19 coronavirus swept across the world. Governments have called for people to stay home to help stop the spread of the disease. Nobody knew exactly how it would affect business and our everyday lives. Hardly anyone expected a novel virus that has forced us into isolation and many of our routine activities online. This sudden surge in traffic puts a lot of strain on systems and exposes major weaknesses that otherwise would go unnoticed. Ensuring that your systems are ready for unforeseeable events is an essential part of your devops strategy.

From daily meetings to your kids’ school lessons to virtual museum visits traffic is up across the board. Keeping these services up and running effectively is now more important than ever. Perhaps the biggest surge in use is in video conferencing services, remote collaboration tools, streaming services and online payments. Having a plan in place for what to do when a surge in traffic threatens to crash the site is vital to prevent downtime and service disruptions. 

Top causes of system downtime and how devops prepare to avert a crisis

Table of contents:

  1. Reasons of rapid increase in traffic
  2. Latest examples of system downtime
  3. System downtime – what could possibly go wrong?
  4. System downtime – all too common mistakes
  5. Final thoughts on how to avert a system downtime crisis
 

1. Reasons of rapid increase in traffic

As many companies scrambled to figure out how to go fully remote in the face of orders to isolate, many daily activities moved to the network. Some examples include: 

1. Meetings — both for work and personal

Video conferencing and messenger services replace face-to-face meetings.

2. Grocery shopping and eating out

We’re ordering more groceries online and arranging food delivery through couriers.

3. Payments

In Poland, for example, payment providers have increased the no-pin transaction limit to the Polish zloty equivalent of $25.00 to gain 80% of overall payments without touching a pinpad or banknotes. This is very hygienic but threatens to overload the payment system. A lot of shopping has moved to e-commerce sites, straining capacity.

4. Daily news

Demand for the latest updates has increased readership on news sites.

5. Streaming videos

Cinema closures have driven demand for streaming services.

6. Outings

We’re visiting museums and galleries virtually.

7. School

Lessons are going ahead in many parts of the world via e-learning platforms.

Whenever you have a rush of traffic in a short amount of time, it tests whether or not the developers who designed the platforms did their jobs well. If a system crashes under the strain of increased traffic, chances are there wasn’t enough planning and foresight in development.

 

2. Latest examples of system downtime

How do millions of people sitting at home affect the use of network services? One local example happened to an online news portal which announced at first that all schools in Poznań will be closed for two weeks due to quarantine. As the news broke, it ended with website unavailability because resources were too low and the company was unable to react quickly. It was only handling over 13,000 users at the same time — in a city with half a million people. Should it be a barrier for your business?

Another more dramatic case happened last week as the stock trading application Robinhood failed due to a surge in traffic. This failure prevented users from accessing their accounts and selling their stocks as prices fell, leaving many with huge losses. The loss of user trust and credibility — not to mention the drastic losses for users themselves is immense. Here are just a few other scenarios that can happen. 

 

3. System downtime – what could possibly go wrong?

1. An increased number of visits can kill the server

Literally, when the resources of a single machine are running out you can talk about unavailable content. Shared hosting is definitely not a solution here. The best would be to use a cloud service provider such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud Platform which has enough resources for a devops team to scale up if needed. Alternatively, you can use a powerful dedicated server in a well-known data center.

2. Poorly designed databases may not withstand a sudden increase in data

Let’s say that the number of orders in the store has increased and with each subsequent order the database responds more slowly.

3. Poorly written code needs a lot of computing power for simple tasks

With increased traffic, costs can rise disproportionately to profits. To avoid this, write tests during development and carry out stress tests before going to production. 

4. Self-hosting instead of using the cloud

Many companies and publishers keep resources on their own. Nowadays, the cloud offers the flexibility to respond to urgent needs. In this model you only pay for what you use, you can start the next server at any time and quench it when the traffic drops. It’s also possible to automate this process. So why not use it?

5. Saving on infrastructure can lead to system failure.

Work on small, cheap resources cannot defend themselves in such a situation. Suppose someone is hosting a website on his own and has a small reserve on bandwidth. Increasing bandwidth is not possible overnight. Instead, use a cloud provider or a data center. 

 

4. System downtime – all too common mistakes

1. No support when the website is on fire

It’s common that companies order a website or e-commerce shop and later just let it run without any devops support. When increased traffic occurs, no one is able to help. At Espeo we offer support for our software in the production environment to not leave you alone in such a case.

2. Old technologies make the product inaccessible

An example would be one of the Polish e-learning platforms that still uses Adobe Flash extensions. Browsers no longer officially support these and the end of life is happening later this year. Now as the schools have been closed, it turned out that using the service exceeds the skills of most young users.

3. Weak security

Today, the standard is to use the HTTPS protocol (using SSL certificates). It provides a secure connection between the user and the provider. No implementation of encrypted transmission may result in users’ rejection. Especially when we deal with payments and providing personal data needed for the order.

On the other hand, sometimes websites are vulnerable to attacks because the code is written using open source solutions that are not updated on time. At Espeo we are putting a lot of effort to keep systems updated. Our services among others consist of scanning of running resources, servers monitoring so we can prevent attacks and keep software stable.

4. “Tests are not needed” sentiment

Many software houses cave to pressure from clients eager to rush a program to production. But it’s a huge mistake to think that you don’t need to test software. Simulating an outage is far easier and cheaper to test for than a system outage. It takes some long-term planning and upfront costs, but it’s much more cost-effective to test for these crises. At Espeo our quality assurance specialists test each project. Depending on the scope our devops team can handle a lot of different tests to prevent problems in the future.

5. Bad architecture

“A Single instance will deal with everything” is a bad concept. Keeping everything in one place will fail sooner or later. The key is to multiply resources and keep the database and website apart from each other. At Espeo advise clients to set environment with load balancers, take advantage of scalability and master-slave database replication.

 

5. Final thoughts on how to avert a system downtime crisis

Long story short, be prepared! Assume the worst scenario and prepare a solution for it before it happens. In Espeo during the development process for our clients, we put a lot of effort to use our experience to design solutions right the first time. 

The biggest part of preparing for a crisis is to make sure you have all the necessary features in place to respond quickly. As the coronavirus has shown us, these very unexpected events can have a huge impact on business and on the software we rely on every day. Making sure it can handle a rapid increase in traffic — and then quickly go back to normal will save you time, money, and reputation.

Want to learn more about devops and testing services? Drop us a line and we’ll get back to you shortly.

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Categories
Blockchain Entrepreneurship Other Software

How blockchain is bringing gamification to every industry

Distributed ledger technology is not the most user friendly or easy to grasp. Blockchain gamification is one way to bridge this user gap. The gaming sector has plenty in store to enrich other industries on how to keep customers engaged. According to a recent study by Newzoo, the global gaming industry has over two billion gamers and is worth about $150 billion. Video game income has even surpassed other forms of entertainment, like movies and music, according to the study. The most famous pieces of art can create sales in millions of units and can sustain numerous concurrent users. 

Various industries are embracing gamification or the use of gaming and game design techniques to engage their users better. Marketing departments are now using gamification in their marketing activities to reduce customer churn. Instead of just providing coupons, renewable points, and discounts, businesses are now spicing up their marketing campaigns using cutting-edge technologies to realize engaging risk and reward mechanisms. Starbucks, for instance, has introduced a loyalty program that enables customers to receive better rewards the more they spend. Besides, the company has also deployed multiple tech-based strategies over the years, like mobile apps, QR codes, and segmented reality to engage their customers. 

The blockchain tech power to offer secure record-keeping and enable transactions through cryptocurrencies makes it suitable for such applications. Different services are already establishing new channels to exploit the potential of blockchain-based solutions and possibilities of gamification. Form of gamification may vary. Projects like Sandblock, for instance, use smart contracts to facilitate their loyalty program campaigns. The digital and decentralized games such as CryptoKitties also demonstrate how crypto tokens can represent ownership of digital assets effectively. These use cases also demonstrate how blockchain has brought back fairness and trust in the gaming industry. In this article, we shall see how blockchain tech is bringing the elements of gamification  not only to typical gaming space, but basically to every sector through loyalty programs, digital ownership, and trustworthy and fair practices.  

Loyalty programs for e-commerce

Critics often complain that loyalty programs concentrate on just maximizing profits for businesses. Participants are incentivized inadequately for their participation by loyalty points campaigns that contain biased rules. Though it is acceptable for a business only to carry out sustainable loyalty programs, they are still supposed to offer customers with satisfactory reward rates. 

The problems begin with outlining business objectives, considering that loyalty campaigns can create many benefits. The marketers then continue with designing the reward system, the composition of reward and producing incentives good enough to cause behavior change but mean to the point that they grind down margins. Besides, there are puzzles of customer psychology to consider, which can make two incentives of equal value stir different levels of consumption.  

Using blockchain for business that needs relevant loyalty programs can eliminate such unfair dealings through the transparency it delivers. Smart contracts can be applied to monitor the mechanisms of these campaigns. Through the openness of smart contracts, it is possible to notice if firms are providing irrational terms and conditions. On the other hand in case of public blockchain space, some unprincipled members may also attempt to participate and abuse the system. Determined scammers can also alter poorly designed gaming rules, and therefore, having transparent records shows the participants who are trying to misbehave clearly. 

Launching a successful blockchain loyalty program starts with the objectives of the campaign. Marketers can only engineer the right strategies and evaluate whether they are running their campaigns well only if they have set clear goals. In other words, true benefits of blockchain come to truly valuable and well planned loyalty programs.

The use of digital currencies and blockchain-based feature will give clients more flexibility with their loyalty points. Many loyalty programs restrict these points for specific purposes and redemption with their respective businesses. Contrary, cryptocurrencies are mutually interchangeable and can be transacted with other tokens or fiat money. If companies are not willing to create a universal digital loyalty token with other businesses, then they can settle on the use of interchangeable tokens. A study by Kaleido Insights shows that the interchangeability of these digital reward tokens is beneficial to both the companies running loyalty programs and the participants.  

The treatment of blockchain-based digital tokens as currency makes them far more flexible and interchangeable compared to loyalty points. Participants can easily exchange such a digital token with other cryptocurrencies or fiat money. That means real financial rewards. Such flexibility gives customers more choice on how they should use rewards, increasing the value of the loyalty campaign, and encouraging customers to shop more from the brand. Digital reward tokens can go even be used for such digital transactions as buying other products and paying for services from other companies because cryptocurrencies have value beyond the brand that issued them. The eventual result is a loyalty coin economy, which, when used more, increases in value. 

Besides, blockchain gamification boosts the outcomes of loyalty programs and minimizes expenses including lowering of the transaction costs. With blockchain technology, a business can provide loyalty campaigns that are transparent and trusted by participants. The transparency brought by blockchain solutions is essential in loyalty programs. 

Blockchain technology will also bring a more streamlined experience in loyalty campaigns. When businesses carry out over one loyalty campaign, it can be challenging to manage both the company and the clients. Lack of a streamlined client loyalty campaign causes missed opportunities, wasted points, and frustration. 

Decentralized systems

Forbes explored the possibility of using a blockchain-based method using a single cryptocurrency, like bitcoin, across several brands or businesses. This decentralized finance method makes the loyalty campaign easier to run and track, saving time, and adding more value to the participants. 

A decentralized network will further ensure that participants enjoy more flexibility and choice, which inspires them to spend more. The method is best suited for bigger businesses, multinationals (such as the Banana Republic, Gap, and Old Navy), or businesses that are willing to partner with those from a complementing sector (like an airline firm, and a hotel chain).

A decentralized approach represents the future and present of digital transformation to some customer loyalty campaigns. For instance, Singapore Airlines and Delta Airlines have launched a blockchain loyalty campaign, substituting their air miles with digital tokens that used for retail purposes.    

Digital ownership through blockchain gamification

Rewards from certain games and gamified campaigns create virtual assets. For video games, for example, items can be acquired by successfully finishing assignments or by conquering rivals. These digital items can be made accessible to a participant or tied to particular accounts. Nevertheless, “ownership” is determined mostly by developers’ rules. 

Because virtual items carry some form of utility in the games, most people are willing to pay for these items. The value of digital items is around $15 billion. Trading of these items has become a significant activity for many developers. Most of them forbid the exchange of virtual items for cryptocurrencies as they term it as a violation of their terms of service. 

Gamification features and blockchain technology are the main ingredients for marketplaces for the trading of virtual assets. This way, blockchain can enable virtual ownership.

Solutions that act as secure markets for trading digital items can enhance the virtual item industry and connect it with other sectors. Blockchain solutions can boost the market capitalization of this industry. 

Blockchain is redefining the ownership of virtual items and transform them into a kind of financial rewards for users. The technology is a means of creating distinctive identifiers for virtual items market. Developers and publishers hardly offer tools that would permit the safe and secure trade of virtual items in their marketplaces. These platforms employ blockchain and smart contracts that allow gamers to trade among themselves safely. 

Trustworthy and fair mechanisms

Gamification is all about engaging customers through new rules, risks, and reward systems. Unluckily, centralized authorities tend to come up with rules that are only beneficial to them. Blockchain technology compels businesses to design and follow the set rules and create equitable risk and reward mechanisms. Decentralized derivatives are some examples of this. CloseCross, one of Espeo’s clients is part of this trend. The use of cryptocurrencies even allows for gifts, like those from loyalty programs, to carry more financial utility for users. The concept of digital ownership also brings more value to customers’ rewards. Users can be confident that through such methods, all parties will benefit from gamified campaigns. 

According to a PwC survey, almost 70% of customers pull out from loyalty programs when it asks for personal details. This is logical, especially with the increasing cases of online identity theft. Blockchain can reduce such risks. Since anonymity is one of the primary features of digital currencies, participants might not have to provide their personal information. Or, if the need arises, blockchain can keep their details more secure.

Blockchain records are fully transparent and trackable, making it even hard for the execution of unauthorized transactions. The PwC study further established that more than 72% of loyalty campaigns are victims of scams and counterfeit sales to acquire loyalty points for purchases they never made. Using blockchain technology to customer loyalty campaigns would enable brands to track loyalty points in real-time and deliver incentives to their clients more effectively. 

Conclusion 

Blockchain gamification in other industries is possible with applications designed to borrow aspects behind the success of the gaming industry. With blockchain technology, other areas can exploit the winning traits of the gaming sector. As blockchain technology continues to disrupt every element of business and daily life, gamification is ripe to follow suit. Carrying out faster, smarter, and more flexible loyalty campaigns can create and retain happy customers. 

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Software Technology

Is web application testing worth the expense?

Recently a client asked me how I prove application testing is worth the money? For me, it’s obvious that testing is a vital part of the development process. Without it, there is little chance for a successful, high-quality product. So how do I prove it to someone who isn’t familiar with the reality of the business?

It is a fact that in almost any aspect of life higher quality comes at a higher price. Do you want to have a great, luxurious car? You need to pay more. Do you want to have a tailor-made suit? You better dig deep into your pocket. Software development is no different in this matter. If you want to have a fast, reliable and threat-secure application you need to invest in testing. But – in the long run — is it really worth the expense? First, we need to understand how an application development cycle looks and how it affects the bug-fix cost.

The software development cycle usually starts with requirements & design phases. This is where you outline the scope of the application, its main functionalities, visuals, architecture, test scope and any other requirements that you may have. This is a very important phase because any issue at this point may result in complications later on. If a developer overlooks a requirement it may be considerably more expensive to fix it later. If you decide to change a requirement at a later stage then the other parts of the application may get affected in a way you could have not anticipated. Fixing an issue at this stage is almost costless – all you need is to rethink and rewrite it or add some new requirements.

The next phase is the actual coding part. Web application development teams usually consist of several people who measure the code in thousands of lines. Each line of code is a potential place for a defect. The more complex the software is the more interdependencies between modules, integrations and architecture pieces there are. Developers are also human and in this jungle of advanced logic, code standards, abstract end-user ideas and external system integrations it is very easy to overlook something. They also have to consider the fact that different browsers/devices often operate in a different manner. There are also changing requirements and bug fixes that require adjustments in code already written. It often happens that one part of the code affects some other unrelated functionalities. Finally, there is also a business pressure to meet the agreed deadlines which can sometimes make the developers work in a hurry. And, this is just the tip of the iceberg. An issue usually found at the development stage is fairly easy to fix as the developer is aware of the code he has just written and it doesn’t take much time to isolate the specified issue. Still, it’s much more costly than a simple change in the requirements phase.

In agile development methodologies testing happens alongside the development process. You may ask yourself a question: if testing takes place, there should be no issues on production, right? Well, not exactly. First of all, it is not feasible to test all the possible inputs and outputs of a complex application. Moreover, it is not possible to test the application for all browser and device combinations in all possible versions. Finally, the user’s creative ways are sometimes futile to predict – it is not possible to come up with all the things that a user may think of doing and prevent them from happening.

There is also a matter of maintaining the application. At times, the new software version may clash with the application and cause bugs. From time to time, the external integrations get updates without updating the code. This, in turn, may cause the app to malfunction. Although it may sound strange sometimes we also choose not to fix some of the bugs. If we know that a defect only causes a minor discomfort for a limited number of users it isn’t sometimes worth fixing because the costs would surpass the actual damage caused by this issue.

Despite the fact that a well-chosen test strategy may minimize the project risks and eliminate all critical issues, it still cannot guarantee an issue-free project. So what is the cost of fixing a bug at the testing stage? It’s even higher than in the development stage. Usually a tester, a developer and, sometimes, a PM decide on the priority of the bug. It is also much more difficult for a developer to diagnose the root cause of the issue. Is it architecture? Does it occur only for a certain set of data? Is it a bug within the code? Is it possible to reproduce it on my machine or is it only test environment related? A developer has to find an answer to these questions and it takes more time than investigating his own code and functionality.

The last phase of the development cycle is when an application is already deployed to production. The cost of fixing bugs on production is significantly higher, sometimes it can be incredibly large. Even setting aside the hard-to-measure costs of damage to company reputation, users leaving the application or customers not being able to complete their purchases – the cost of fixing the bug is higher. The issues that users find are usually much more difficult to reproduce in the development environment. They’re often connected to a specific production architecture or database state. On top of everything, the users usually don’t provide as many details as a qualified software tester which prolongs the investigation. The table below presents some real-life examples revealing how much an issue can affect a company’s revenue.


So is it even possible for software to be bug-free? Well, let me answer that question with another question. Do big companies with a huge amount of resources – like Apple, Google or Facebook provide bug-free software?

Knowing all that and based on the above explanations and estimated bug-fix costs provided by IBM data we can perform an example Return On Investment(ROI) analysis for testing.

Let’s try to analyze an ROI example for a 3-month project. First, let’s make the following assumptions:

1. Assuming that bug-fix cost during the design phase is $10 using the above IBM estimated costs we get:

  • Design bug-fix cost – $10
  • Development bug-fix cost – $65
  • Testing bug-fix cost – $150
  • Production bug-fix cost – $1000

2. There are 100 must-fix bugs during a 3-month period and they all cost approximately the same.
3. None of the issues were found during the design phase (which could have lowered the total cost even more)

Now we have to estimate what the cost of manual tests would be and test automation as well as the number of bugs to find in each phase. Assuming that basic manual application testing costs around $2000 per month (that’s the salary of a specialist) and adding some minor infrastructure fee for the test environment we receive a total investment of $6,500. When it comes to test automation let’s increase the specialist’s salary as well as the infrastructure & setup cost – then we get $11,000.

Let’s estimate that out of 100 total bugs 25 of them will be found by the developers (this is a constant number no matter whether we carry out tests or not). We can estimate that during the testing phase the testers will find 35 issues while performing manual tests and 50 when we add automation on top of that.

The rest of the bugs will be found by the end-users. Now we can count the total cost of quality as the sum of conformance (cost of ensuring that the app conforms to quality requirements) and non-conformance (money that needs to be spent for not conforming to the quality requirements). Finally, we can count the test ROI as the value brought by testing divided by the cost of actual testing.

This example certainly contains numerous assumptions but you can use it in an actual project. It shows how we can actually estimate ROI. I believe that it provides some insight to whether application testing costs are worth the money. Even though hiring a testing team is, in fact, an expense, when you look at your entire application development cycle you will view it as an asset. Testing will spare you a lot of future quality expenses. This also causes things like user frustration, clients leaving and even company reputation damage – factors which are difficult to measure in terms of money.

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Blockchain Finance Financial Services Software

How to introduce cryptocurrency payments in an online payment gateway

Cryptocurrency payments have become a popular topic in the past few years largely due to the rise of Bitcoin. In 2017, bitcoin reached its all-time high of about $20,000. Unsurprisingly, this invited the attention of investors from across the world. Statista reports that there are nearly 34 million active crypto-wallet users worldwide as of the third quarter of 2019. 

Because of increased awareness and use of digital currencies, many product and service providers are looking to tap into this small, but tech-savvy market. Fees on crypto payments are also often considerably lower than traditional payments processors. Here’s how to offer your customers crypto payments. 

Cryptocurrency payments

Cryptocurrency is a digital form of currency, a medium of the electronic exchange, which uses cryptography to carry safe transactions. First introduced in 2009, the technology runs on blockchain technology that acts as an auditing and clearing tool. In short, this prevents double spending and removes the need for centralized payment processors to verify funds and record transactions. Crypto payments offer immutability and transparency. 

Privacy-minded consumers are especially drawn to cryptocurrency so if you’re trying to entice this consumer segment, consider implementing cryptocurrency payments.

Most popular cryptos

Where the starting point of the cryptocurrency was bitcoin, there are several others to choose as well. Here is the list of most popular cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. Supporting one or more of these will give consumers more choice in how to pay.

  1. Bitcoin
  2. Ethereum (Ether)
  3. Ripple (XRP)
  4. Bitcoin Cash (BCH)
  5. EOS
  6. Cardano (ADA)
  7. Litecoin (LTC)
  8. Stellar (XLM)
  9. IOTA
  10. NEO

Why “big” payment processors don’t support crypto payments 

Big processors do not accept cryptocurrency payments because they charge high fees for carrying transactions. On one level, this makes sense because companies such as Visa have to maintain an enormous auditing apparatus and it costs money to it. On the other hand, they’ve also built monopolies that cater to big business. As a result, small and medium-sized businesses bear the brunt of fees.

KYC procedures for merchants that want to accept crypto

A strict KYC procedure needs to be followed to accept cryptocurrency payments. Often referred to as a complicated process, it requires the essential records and personal details of the merchants. 

Step 1: 

The initial step involves the verification of the mobile number of the applicant. For a bitcoin exchange, you will receive a code on the registered number in the applicant’s name. You will receive a code on the same number, which will be required to complete the identity verification process.

Step 2:

The second step involves providing personal details. A copy of all the personal details needs to be submitted. It depends upon the type of platform being used to carry the transactions, according to which documents for identity verification are asked. Some of the personal documents required include driver’s license, scan of an ID, recent utility bill, birth certificate, or maybe a passport. It does not require any bank mediators as the traditional payment methods do. 

The requirement of documents varies depending upon the kind of transactions or according to the amount you are planning to trade. 

If you think the process requires a lot of hustle, then you can also rope in third parties to do the task for you. Nowadays, various third parties and financial institutions provide the services of a mediator that can help get the merchants to get KYC, hassle-free. 

Processing cryptocurrency payments through the payment gateway

The crypto payment gateways give the merchants the facility to make and accept payments in bitcoins. There are multiple processors currently available in the market available that allow bitcoin transactions. 

With the blockchain platforms, you can immediately receive and make payment and convert it into fiat money in no time. It simply makes the whole process super convenient and swift.

Coinbase

For the best bitcoin global exchange experience, Coinbase is the most trusted name. It boasts of being the largest bitcoin exchange in the U.S.A. Coinbase has a massive user base as it offers some fantastic features to its users. One trusted name for instant cryptocurrency conversion into fiat money. It completes the bitcoin exchange requirement for big and small businesses alike and takes only 2-3 days to clear the transactions. The exchange is free and prompts 1% transaction fees only after the initial $1 million transactions have been carried out. 

Coingate

The best thing about the user-friendly application is that it supports near around 40 cryptocurrencies. With the single application, merchants can single-handedly at a point of time make payments using different currencies and methods. Coingate charges a nominal 1% fee on transactions, which is quite reasonable. 

BitPay

Its presence in the market since 2011 makes it one trusted name in the Bitcoin world. Based out of the U.S., it facilitates accepting bitcoin as payment. The two-factor authentication provided by the app makes it a secure and trusted source to carry transactions. You can make daily transactions worth $1,000 and annual transactions worth $10,000, beyond which it levies 1% transaction fees. The app supports numerous currencies; from the Chinese Yuan, Euro, Pound Sterling, U.S. dollar, and direct bank deposits. 

GoCoin

Loved by the developer globally, it offers basic, straightforward API, which makes the transactions super secure. Various plugins available on GoCoin makes it compatible for use on multiple online shopping platforms. The payout is made in dollars, and they charge a 1% fee on transactions. 

CoinPayment

You search for the low fees crypto payment gateway ends at CoinPayment. It charges only 0.50% transaction fees for accepting 1,270 altcoins. It currently serves around 2,45,000 vendors in more than 180 different countries. You get access to various shopping cart plugins for some of the famous e-commerce stores like Magento, Opencart, Drupal Commerce, Shopify. 

Settlement of crypto transactions 

It usually takes around 10-20 minutes for a Bitcoin transaction to confirm. These scalability challenges still hamper some adoption. However, using a different crypto to accept payments is one option. Some cryptocurrencies take very little time to settle. Stellar on the other hand, takes much less time to clear, somewhere around a few minutes. 

Nearly around 3-5 bank working days, the amount gets reflected in the bank account of a merchant. Unlike the traditional payment options, the cryptocurrency transactions are irreversible.

However, this is not a matter worth worrying as there are mechanisms to help cases with legitimate complaints and refund requests. Thanks to crypto technology, wallets securely store details of the merchant’s wallet on a distributed ledger. In case there is a need, all the transaction records can be scrutinized and viewed publicly. 

Cryptocurrency is the future as it is an increasingly useful option of making transactions and carrying secure businesses and exchange, across the globe.