I used it today and it was fantastic! After having struggled for months getting BitCoins in the UK, tried UKash vouchers, OKPay, Mt, Sango, all of them worked, all the fast ways were huge rip off's and MtGox was the most reliable for me though always took a few days for GBP to hit my account and went through loads of various 24 hour lock outs or can't withdraw because password change, security features that made it especially frustrating not knowing or being warned about them. Overall I have a very poor impression of buying BTC in the UK especially after seeing how easy it can be in other country's and not understanding why in London which is normally so connected it was so hard!
Until this weekend when I found the new PingIt funding option of BlockChain.Info
My friend has a Barclay's account so I asked him to do a test for me of £16 (enough to buy 2 BTC) As the verification for the PingIt for me as a Non Barclays account holder who hadn't setup PingIt wasn't going to finish until Monday. These are my results which I posted in another thread, The summary all VERY positive, super excited about this method, took 7 hours to hit my BlockChain.Info wallet and that was with doing the PingIt at 5am on a Saturday morning.
Orig Post:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=102965.msg1212054#msg1212054The £16 hit my BlockChain.info Wallet this afternoon from Barclay's PingIt app!
To convert GBP to BitCoin using PingIt I spent £16 and received 2.08 BTC or £ 7.69 per BTC. Looking at the trade history of MtGox GBP when the PingIt was sent around 5:30am the trade history between 3:30am and now nearly always traded at 7.69 or higher, only a few trades dipped down to 7.6 (about 9 trades) but the majority were all 7.69 or above peaking at 7.75 so overall a very good price for the BitCoins themselves. At the moment they are also not charging any fee.
The time was very fast, one of the fastest ways I have been able to electronically purchase BTC in the UK at such a good rate. Sent the money with PingIt at 5:35am and the BitCoins reached my wallet at 12:25 so under 7 hours on a Saturday early morning. This is also after the site wasn't working for many hours so I'm not sure if this made the time any slower because of a back log, I'm also not sure how automated the system is to know whether or not the fact it was such a weird time and day. I will be interested to do another transaction during normal working hours during the week and see if the turn around time is any faster.
Well done BlockChain.Info this is such a HUGE step forward for the UK I have struggled to get coins since I started and have been so jelous of the US and how easy it is to get BTC and get it fast.
I would still love to see a Dwolla/UKash/Voucher system roll out over here so that you can pop to a shop no more than a few miles away hand over GBP for a code that MtGox or another major exchange could simply take and give you funds to then put offers for coins on. When the UK hits that level I will be very pleased.
As I've seen stated by some other users before, the UK is lagging behind on this but the adoption is growing and once it catches on is going to be a huge market here. If I had the money to invest and fund a company that could roll out an infrastructure here I would in a second as it's growing fast here and is only a matter of months before this market has company's that are capitalising on this growth and unlike BlockChain.Info who have no real competitor to their PingIt funding method and yet aren't charging huge fee's and making a fortune as UK users will pay it as they have no choice!
Great job BlockChain.Info I look forward to seeing other UK entities step up and create solutions as fast and competitive! Anyone want to share with me what is holding back solutions such as the UKash style cash to a shop for a voucher redeemable for BitCoin Exchange funding. I would absolutely love to be a part of getting something like this going over here, even if on a small scale, targeting maybe just a few key central london/city shops.