Post
Topic
Board Service Announcements
Re: 1st bidirectional ATM in Belgium
by
Puppet
on 12/12/2014, 16:40:16 UTC
OK tried it today. Sold a little less than 1 BTC. Here is what I found;

The good news is that it works, and that by itself is pretty awesome. The exchange rate/ margin is doable for occasional use. The location where the atm is hosted  is brilliant, didnt know it, but its lovely internet/cafe/bistro/not sure what you have there, although one does look out of place without a laptop.

The not so good news;
First its a bit more cumbersome than I expected and than needed. First you register with your phone, confirm with an SMS code that arrives almost instantly. Fair enough, one comment perhaps is you might want to mention the phonenumber needs to be entered in international format. Selling itself is easy enough with QR code. After you sent your bitcoins, you have to wait for I believe 2 confirmations. Thats entirely reasonable, so far so good.

Once the 2 confirmations have arrived, you receive an SMS with a code and a msg that you can collect the cash. To use the code, you have to log in again with your phonenumber,  which is then validated again by yet another code via  SMS, you have to enter the code, then enter the code of the earlier sms to collect. That shouldnt be necessary. Just entering the code on the confirmation sms should be enough IMO.

Secondly, the atm was nearly out of cash. I hope thats not going to happen too frequently. This might partially explain my last problem; when I collected the cash, the atm spits out one note at the time, and does so reaaaly slowly. I looked like an idiot picking up a 5 euro note, waiting, a 10 euro note, waiting, another 5 euro note, waiting, over and over again with  only a few 20 euro notes and no 50 (let alone 100 euro). It took forever!

For tiny amounts, who cares, but I pity the guy that collects 500 euro there!