Leading bitcoin exchange and wallet service Coinbase has introduced new features to make it easier for merchants to accept digital currency bitcoin. These include:

Partial refunds to orders: Coinbase explains that if a customer purchases 10 items and wants to refund just one, the new merchant tools allow the user to easily refund a partial amount of bitcoin instead of their entire order.

Improved reliability: The company announced that it has started using Insight as its BlockExplorer, facilitating more reliable transaction confirmations.

Overpayments: Coinbase noted that customers accidentally overpay for their order, either due to transaction “miner” fees being unnecessarily added, or due to errant keystrokes. With this new feature, if the BTC amount exceeds the listed price, the order is automatically completed but flagged as “overpaid”. This way, the customer will successfully receive their items without merchant intervention.

“Furthermore, we’ve made it very easy for the merchant to refund the customer who accidentally overpaid. We track the original fiat price of the order to make it clear what amount to refund”, Coinbase said.

Mispayment Buffer: Through its v2 API, Coinbase has developed a way to create mispayment buffers – percentages that can be applied to either side of the quoted order price, declaring a customized and merchant-specific range of acceptable payment amounts. This means that for a 10 BTC order with 1 % underpayment buffer, a customer who accidentally pays 9.9 BTC will successfully complete the order, while someone who pays 9.8 BTC will not.

“This gives merchants more control, allowing them to determine what is best for their business”, Coinbase said.