San Francisco-based Coinbase today announced they have added support for bitcoin payment URLs, so when a user enables this feature, they’ll be able to click on bitcoin payment URLs and be directed to Coinbase.
Coinbase then pre-fills each of the fields (bitcoin address and amount), which helps the consumer make some time and send through their payment with ease.
“Ease of use is especially important when sending payments to merchants during a checkout, like when making a purchase with bitcoin on Overstock or Fiverr,” the company wrote on their blog. “Using Coinbase as a bitcoin URL handler works seamlessly with checkout flows provided by Coinbase, BitPay, and any other payment processors using bitcoin payment links.”
The feature, at the current time, works with both Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. It can be enabled in a user’s Account Settings, in the Advanced section.
So when a user wants to pay for something in BTC, then clicks the bitcoin payment URL, their browser goes to their online Coinbase wallet (after you log in). I am curious what do bitcoin payment URLs look like, what prevents bad actors from embedding an attack in the link, and are there tools to inspect bitcoin payment URLs for security?