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Show HN: Munt – The simplest way to accept cryptocurrencies (getmunt.com)
98 points by svenvdz on April 12, 2018 | hide | past | favorite | 75 comments


Hey guys, I'm aware of the unfortunate name of the product. Munt actually means coin in Dutch. So my apologies to people I have insulted.

I will change the name as soon as possible, if you have any feedback on how to name it next, that would be appreciated.


I've sent you an email to support@ with a name suggestion.


I'm dutch with a pretty good grasp of english and never knew "munt" was slang or offensive. You learn every day.


It's definitely not commonly known as a derogatory word in English - at least not by the largest English speaking nation (US).

Very, very few Americans would even know any meaning for the word "munt". But if they heard it spoken, especially if in the context of money or the herb (mint), they would assume the speaker said "mint". Also, I don't think it's a bit of a stretch to imagine that munt became mint in England a few hundred years ago...

Some of the people here need to lighten up about names. Perhaps we can start with the assumption that a word isn't being used negatively until it's demonstrated otherwise.


"Getting munted" is also slang for taking drugs from the clubbing scene in the 90s/00s. One who does so would be a munter.


Still is.


(UK resident here) - didn't realize the drugs connotation. I just assumed it was interchangeable with 'minger'.


It's both, which meaning comes across is dependent on who you're talking to I guess! Wiktionary says the drug-related meaning is from New Zealand, but it's been around here in London for at least two decades... we do have a lot of Anzacs though!


Same here.

In high school (so, decades ago), we found the word "tight" as a graffiti piece on the school wall one morning. That was the day I learned it stood for "drunk".


Haha, I've learned a new word today.


That... is an unfortunate name. I would really encourage people to google a word before choosing it as a product name.


I'm from the Netherlands and Googling "munt" returns nothing strange.

Reminds me of a colleague who named his new technology "spics" (it easy to pronounce and as an acronym is fitted perfectly)... Only after some weeks he googled it. It's changed now needless to say.


Munted also means getting incredibly and unxonrroballu high on drugs in Aussie slang.

Perhaps Minted if you want to keep the name similar?


Indeed, imagine the horror all the English speakers have when the come to Netherlands and are offered verse munt thee!

How silly those Dutch are for inventing a word before English existed, and then continuing to use it today even when apparently a sliver of the English speakers of the world think it means something bad.


Well, if it's being marketed to an English speaking audience, they will need to consider whether the name has negative connotations regardless of where it originated.

American companies have to be sensitive to this when expanding into new markets too.


Although, occasionally, they make mistakes. Coca-cola tried to sell water with a campaign that declared it 'bottled spunk', in the early 00's. Spunk, in english english, means semen.


That's the problem. If you look broadly enough, you will find someone who is offended by some of your words. You will never get everyone to agree on what is "ok".


"munt" is the Dutch word for coin.


Unfortunately common things in one language often mean other things in another language. The author is clearly trying to share this with the English speaking world, (the site is English after all), so it stands to reason that you would choose your words carefully in English.


That is more difficult than it may appear.

Sometimes you need people that are pretty immersed in a culture to know about these things and avoid shooting yourself in the foot.

Hyundai, for example, almost made the mistake of releasing a vehicle named Kona in Portugal.

Kona is a pretty harmless word in most contexts, but "kona" reads exactly like "cona" for a Portuguese speaker, and "cona" is slag for "vagina".

Oops.

They renamed it Kauai for the Portuguese market, IIRC.


In the general case, yes. But googling for Munt will tell you that it's not really a suitable name for a product.


There’s also the Ford Pinto. In Brazilian (!) Portuguese, “pinto” is close to the male equivalent of “cona”.


If you survey Americans, I think you would find a very small percentage who had ever heard the word "munt".


Or Zune, even now.


Interesting, so since it is/was used primarily in South Africa and Afrikaans has its roots in Dutch I'd guess that's actually the root of the derogatory use as well. As in "people traded with coin".


Not only used in South Africa, but I had a similar thought as well.



Probably unnecessary nitpick, but here goes: the actual derogatory term is "Munter" rather than just simply the word "Munt".

For example, I saw [INSERT NAME HERE] and they were looking like a total Munter. when it is used in a derogatory sense I think it is more often used when talking about [INSERT APPROPRIATE PRONOUN FOR PERSON WITH VAGINA HERE], but as far as I'm aware it can be applied to both/all/neither/X sexes/genders/species.

ETA: This is my second edit because apparently I don't understand how HN works after all this time. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.


>> the actual derogatory term is

No, the Oxford dictionary definition for the product's name as cited is correct in the regions it says it is. The existence of other, similar derogatory terms in other regions is secondary, if anything.


Fair enough. My apologies, when I looked at the link I didn't notice it was for a particular region and not the UK.

You are absolutely correct.


A munter is also someone who takes drugs, it comes from the context of taking pills at clubs - a munter munting gets munted.


Weird, it seems I can reply to you directly. Does anyone know why the "reply" button wasn't instantly available to me?

Here is my response again in case you are getting notifications and don't see my edited reply:

"I can't seem to reply to the reply to this reply, but I think when someone takes too many drugs they are classically known as being "Munted"."


HN hides the reply button for a little while to prevent flame wars.

You can reply without waiting by clicking “x minutes ago” on the comment.


^ This. Here, have an Internet hug: {huggle}.

This is going to save me literally seconds over the course of my lifetime, and as one with absolutely no patience with how slow computers are this is the best thing I've learnt this week.

This is also coming across as a really sarcastic reply, but it's really, genuinely not and I am very grateful that you pointed this out. Again, see hugs above.


You are welcome, happy to help :)


Interesting, I always equated pills with "munted" but those other permutations always meant something very different. Maybe it's a regional thing in the UK?


Wiktionary says that munter and munted are from New Zealand, which I'm not sure about but could give it a regional spread - it's been common here in London for nearly two decades, but we have quite a few Anzacs here!


Meanwhile “å være munter” in Norwegian means “to be cheerful”.


Lovely


I'm aware of that yes, really unfortunate . Thanks for the feedback.


I know it as the portmanteau...

:/


So .. how does this actually work? Is it a direct wallet transfer or is it an intermediary? How does it handle unconfirmed transactions? Which cryptocurrencies is it valid for? Does it do refunds? Are there KYC/AML requirements?


Hi there, Munt works as an intermediary, we send the funds to your account when the transaction is confirmed. You can check if the transaction is confirmed with our REST API and PHP library.

We currently support Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Ethereum, Dash and Ripple.

Right now we only refund payments that failed for example if the customer pays too much or too little. We do plan to add the functionality to refund payments manually.

Lastly there are no KYC/AML requirements to withdraw in cryptocurrencies.


Looks great! Might want to double check US regs. As I understand it, businesses that accept crypto from person A and transmit it to person B are considered "money transmitters" in the United States https://www.fincen.gov/resources/statutes-regulations/guidan...


This is something that wasn't 100% clear to me either. People pay money to your wallet address. You verify the amount, etc, and then forward the payment to my wallet. If the person pays in Ethereum, I receive Ethereum (not USD or something), correct?


Also, what's the email address used for? Is it compulsory?


Ignoring the name (which everyone else has commented on), this looks nice. I like the colour scheme too; it reminds me of custard. The simplicity of the dashboard is pretty refreshing and it looks well documented for a new product.


it reminds me of custard

It’s more caramel-coloured on my device, but I like both


Thank you so much


Congratulations on the launch!

Suggestion: Add credit-card processing. As a developer, I would benefit from being able to implement a single payment integration that let my customers pay how they want to. Credit cards are the obvious biggie, but it would also be huge to be able to e.g. receive European bank transfers as a US-based business. My dream "OmniPay" would also handle PayPal, Venmo, etc. as well, all with one integration.

Much as I'd like to try accepting cryptocurrencies, I'm definitely not going to manage multiple payment processors to add support for what (I would suppose) would be a tiny fraction of my business.


Hey! Sorry for the shameless plug - I actually had the same problem so I built a simple product around this, eliopay.com . It integrates with PayPal, Stripe (CC) and cryptocurrencies (with Paybear). Still very new tho (haven't officially launched).

I'd love to integrate with Munt in the future!


Looks fascinating! I'll keep an eye out for your Show HN!


Thanks for the feedback!


Olodolo.com currently uses coinpayments.net for this. What benefits do you offer over their implementation? I have actually been looking for a nicer system to switch over to.


Hi there,

Munt is an easy to integrate and user friendly way to start accepting cryptocurrencies in your website. Munt handles things like email receipts and refunds if payments fail or if the customer has paid too much or too little. Munt is also customizable (more options coming soon) to fully represent your brand's look and feel. Have you tried our demo yet? Love to hear your thoughts on it.


Hi, I did try the demo. Based on it and your comment I see your product having the following benefits: refunds, (much)nicer UI, more customizable, and faster transactions (3 minutes? are you still accomplishing that when transfer times are generally slower than that?).

However CoinPayments is cheaper (0.5% per transaction), and supports many more coins and features. For example they can easily be set up to collect shipping addresses for me so that I don't have to. They do send a variety of receipt emails as well, but something nicer/customizable would be preferable. I could accomplish all of this using the CoinPayments API rather than the prebuilt buttons, but that would require a lot more work on my end.

I would be willing to move to something with a nicer, more customizable UI if the cost/feature gap was closed. Good luck with this!


Terrible choice of name... it’s a common, and not very pleasant, slang term

Munted: uncontrollably drunk

Munter: extremely unattractive female

In the UK at least, possibly other English-speaking countries.


Not just drunk: munt specifically means you’re really out of your mind on drugs.

Usually in a happy way with friends, like “we were munt on the couch together”, but yeah. That’s what it means.

The URL makes this worse. To “get munt”, well. Yep.

Source: native English, now live in Australia.


Besides the name, what do you think of the service?


To be honest, it looks like a great service and I think the name has probably made me look on it with a more favourable eye as it doesn't seem to have been a deliberate insult. But rather an unfortunate translation between languages, there are only so many vowel sounds to go around after all.

I'm aware this is probably a niche opinion. But Hayhoe.


Keep the name, people will remember you product


Great idea! Some design feedback.

The contrast on the signup page is too low - https://getmunt.com/signup - I can't tell what each field is supposed to be.

The white on yellow at the bottom of the sign up, and also on your chat pop-up is also quite low.


Thanks, always room for improvement!


Great - it is good to see competition to GoURL. The Woocommerce integration in particular is great to see. GoURL's woocommerce plugin is functional but the experience is not the greatest.

Good luck with it - I will potentially switch one of my products over to this on a trial basis.


I signed up for an account and have some feedback:

* The signup was very easy

* 2FA is missing, considering withdrawals will be made through the account if automatic withdrawals are not enabled, that is an absolute must have.

* Clicking on "Upgrade your Plan" takes me back to the logged out site even though I remain logged in

* I uploaded a logo and I am not sure what it is used for, it's not displayed anywhere.

* I signed up in particular because I saw Woocommerce on the front page. Post login there is no mention of it, and I am not sure there is actually a plugin for it.

Keep working at it guys - it's a good segment to be in.


Hey Andrem,

Thanks for the feedback. 2fa is definitely on our agenda to implement in the following weeks, we do check if the device has been verified or not, so if a new device tries to enter your account you need to verify it in your email.

The logo is used on the checkout pages you create, the plugin can be downloaded from the homepage for now.


Are you going to accept Lightning?


Yes, but our first priority is to make the platform more stable.


Thank you for doing this.


Munt also means to vomit in Australian slang


I’m Australian and have never heard the word “munt” to be used in this context.


Interesting and nice landing page ... But you really need to change the name. It's racist!


XMR, XVG, ADA and I'm in!!


CGA, EGA and VGA and I'm in!! Not sure on your stance about forks, but probably SVGA as well :)


Add verge (XVG) and I'm interested.




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