A customer wants to launch an ICO which should accept contributions in Ethers, Bitcoins, and fiat via credit cards and wire transfer. Anyone was able to solve this? I know that this isn't an Ethereum problem but it seems to be an issue for ICOs since most accept only Ethers.
2 Answers
Answer regarding FIAT - you can accept bank wire transfers with no problems. But a credit card is practically not possible since customer can initiate a refund within weeks after transaction.
Accepting currencies other than Ether is not impossible but requires a great deal of work.
It also requires a great deal of trust from your users/investors as you are bypassing the rules of your contract, so to speak.
Accepting Ether is easy and trustless since anyone can see the code of the contract and make sure that ehen they are sending eth the contract will assign them the corresponding amount of tokens.
Accepting anything else can be coded or done manually. Just process the payment, convert the currency to ether according to the current exchange rate and send that ether to the contract on behalf of the user (you must have them provide the Ethereum address they want to use).
I'm usually very wary of putting money on an ICO in anything other than ether. Nothing prevents them from getting the btc/usd and then not delivering my tokens.
And for the developer, this requires a lot of extra steps in terms of coding, regulatory measures, security,etc.