In 2018, we added support for four additional cryptocurrency settlement options for BitPay merchants. In addition to Bitcoin (BTC), BitPay merchants can receive settlements in Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and three stablecoins (GUSD, USDC, and PAX).

Now we’re happy to share a new improvement: merchants can receive their BitPay settlements in up to five of these cryptocurrencies at once, in addition to their supported local currency.

Here’s a glimpse of the new settlements page merchants can see when they log into their BitPay accounts:

Want to start receiving multi-cryptocurrency settlements for your BitPay payments? View our guide to getting started.

We’re excited to provide additional options and to give our merchants more flexibility with their settlements. We hope to continue adding valuable options for our merchants and their customers.

Want to learn about why we started settling in stablecoins like GUSD, USDC, and PAX in 2018? Read our blog post, “Why is BitPay Settling to Merchants with Stablecoins?”

Originally published at blog.bitpay.com on January 8, 2019.

BitPay Merchants Can Now Receive Multi-Cryptocurrency Settlements was originally published in BitPay On Bitcoin on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Today we’re excited to announce a new way for BitPay merchants to receive settlements for their Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash payments: Gemini Dollars (GUSD) and Circle USD Coin (USDC).

Meet GUSD and USDC

Gemini Dollars (GUSD) and Circle USD Coin (USDC) are both results of efforts by Gemini and Circle (both regulated cryptocurrency exchanges) to represent real US dollar holdings as tokens on blockchains.

The value of each of these coins is pegged to the value of the US dollar at a 1:1 ratio, so there’s no risk of value change or price volatility for holders. Holders can redeem these “stable coins” directly for US dollars via Gemini (for GUSD) or Circle (for USDC) exchange accounts.

Why this matters for BitPay merchants

BitPay makes accepting cryptocurrency easy for businesses. Many of our clients can use BitPay to accept Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash payments from customers, then receive direct bank transfers in their own local currencies, from pounds to dollars to euros.

Until now, though, BitPay merchants without supported bank accounts (particularly in emerging markets like Asia or South America) could only receive settlements in Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash. These cryptocurrencies are great for fast, cross-border settlements, but they do carry a risk of price volatility. When Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash prices change, this can be hard for businesses that don’t have reliable access to cryptocurrency exchanges.

Because GUSD and USDC tokens exist on borderless blockchains, BitPay can now settle these US-dollar pegged stable coins to merchants, wherever they are in the world — even if they don’t have bank accounts*. And since each GUSD and USDC stable coin is tied to one US dollar, there is no volatility risk for the business receiving the settlement.

Getting started with GUSD and USDC settlements

All of BitPay’s merchants can start receiving all or some of their BitPay settlements in the form of GUSD or USDC, starting today.

It’s easy to get started. All you’ll need is a wallet compatible with ERC20 tokens. Follow these steps in your BitPay account to add your new settlement preferences:

1. In your BitPay dashboard, select Settings, then Settlement.
2. Click Edit next to Cryptocurrency Address.
3. Add your ERC20 wallet address for either USDC or GUSD.
4. Save your settlement settings and confirm them in the email you receive from BitPay.

Once you do that, you’re all set! Just like all our cryptocurrency settlement options, we issue settlement for GUSD and USDC within 24 hours of when a merchant gets a sufficient settlement balance (20 GUSD or 20 USDC). The blockchain doesn’t have bank holidays, so we send cryptocurrency settlements 365 days a year.

To learn more about how to redeem GUSD for US dollars*, check out the resources provided by Gemini (for GUSD) and Circle (for USDC):

• GUSD redemption
• USDC redemption

We are excited to open up this new settlement option to BitPay’s merchants around the world. This is just another way that blockchain technology is making payments work better and faster in a global marketplace.

Not using BitPay yet? What are you waiting for? You can sign up now. Or subscribe to the BitPay blog so we can let you know about new tools we’re building to make your payments better.

*While anyone can hold GUSD or USDC, you will need a US dollar bank account if you do want to redeem GUSD or USDC for dollars. If you do not have a bank account, you can still hold GUSD or USDC or trade them for other assets.

Originally published at blog.bitpay.com on October 15, 2018.

BitPay Merchants Can Now Receive Stable Coin Settlements in Gemini Dollars and Circle USD Coin was originally published in BitPay On Bitcoin on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Our Customer Success team is doing an amazing job. On average, a user will receive a response within two hours and an answer to their problem within 24 hours. This level of support is for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year (366 for leap years). Our inquiry rate is also at an all time low with only 1.4% of BitPay invoices needing any help from our Customer Success team.

We’re not satisfied with these numbers and are working to push them even lower because we care about our customers and want to provide the best customer service possible. Unfortunately, we failed to provide the best customer service in 2017. Our old strategy could not keep up with Bitcoin’s meteoric growth in 2017.

BitPay was riding the wave just along with everyone else, providing excellent service when activity was low but unable to meet expectations as transaction activity rose exponentially. To be a leader in the space we needed a new strategy that would allow for support with dependable metrics regardless of the price. We needed to adopt a stronger and more scalable foundation for Customer Success.

BitPay Support v.1.0

Originally, customer success was largely handled by every member of BitPay. That included designers, developers, marketers, and even our CEO. Why did we do it this way?

We wanted every member of the company to experience the customer journey. With those pain points in mind, our designers could design more user-friendly products, our developers could prioritize changes that would most help our users, and marketing could write content geared towards helping our users. This worked well until Bitcoin’s price grew 1500% along with new people using the cryptocurrency (a jump from around 4 million to 30 million users). The old model failed so we needed a radical change and a serious upgrade.

A Radical Change: Payment Protocol

At the end of 2017 and beginning of 2018, we adopted Payment Protocol (BIP70) as our standard for paying a BitPay invoice. With our error rates now at 0.27%, Payment Protocol has proven to be the best way to deal with screwed up payments. You can check out the graph to see the impact Payment Protocol has had:

Credit cards and debit cards always do exact payment so you never have to worry about paying too much or too little. With cash, you can mistakenly pay too much or too little. Thankfully, the cashier is usually able to spot the mistake and sort it out before the purchase is made.

Because Bitcoin works like cash and funds are sent within seconds, it’s easy for those mistakes to happen without anyone noticing. That means the business doesn’t get what they asked for and the customer doesn’t get what they paid for. So, with the adoption of Payment Protocol, BitPay is able to reject and refund payments that are too big, too small, or take too long to arrive.

With Payment Protocol, BitPay makes sure that you’re sending the correct amount within BitPay’s 15 minute time-frame. This helps push error rates closer to zero which, combined with our low rates, allow businesses to complete purchases at a lower cost than VISA and Mastercard.

Even if fees are low and refunds are automatic, these payment errors are problems for merchants and customers. It’s like a declined credit card transaction. You’re forced to try again, try something else, or give up on buying what you wanted. And these problems cost: they cost both merchants and consumers a successful purchase. You can see how drastically lower the dollar value of payment errors was in June 2018 compared to June 2017 (before we adopted Payment Protocol):

BitPay Support v.2.0

We seriously upgraded our Customer Success team by growing it 500%. With many more hands on deck, we quickly worked through BitPay’s backlog of support emails and brought our response and resolution times down to an industry leading level.

The goal of the new and improved Customer Success Team is to provide success for our users at every step of their journey using BitPay. They are working with Sales Engineering to take over the setup and day-to-day operations of merchant accounts. They are working with our developers to expand their technical knowledge and ability to answer basic development questions. They are working with Marketing to help make BitPay a positive addition to our users’ brands.

By working both internally with the BitPay team and externally with our users, the Customer Success team allows all the members of our company to focus on their primary goals (development, marketing, sales, etc.) while making sure everyone at BitPay maintains a customer oriented focus.

This new team structure will help make sure BitPay is not overwhelmed with support requests like we were in 2017, regardless of what the future brings.

The Path Forward

Currently, BitPay’s Customer Success team is launching four initiatives:

1. Subject Matter Experts (SMEs): They handle the trickier problems that our customers have, maintain our help articles and documentation, and train the team to better understand their specific expertise (BitPay Card, BitPay Wallet, etc.).
2. Customer Success Engineers (CSEs): They will directly reach out to new BitPay accounts and help them get setup, answer questions, and show them all the resources available. They will be tour guides for BitPay’s payment processing platform.
3. Customer Success Managers (CSMs): They will have a similar role to our CSEs, but will focus on identifying trends, looking for root causes to issues, implementing improved business processes, gathering feedback for feature requests and and enhancements for BitPay’s products.
4. Support Form: Our users can expect frequent updates to BitPay’s support form going forward. The ultimate goal for the support form is to provide real time answers for common questions along with access to the merchant dashboard and the ability to pre-populate some form information.

With a robust, multi-dimensional team and these initiatives that are being launched, BitPay is positioned to continue improving the experience our users have with all of our products. Customer success is essential for the future of cryptocurrency. That means it will remain essential for BitPay both now and into the future.

Have questions about Payment Protocol? Check out our Payment Protocol FAQ page!

Subscribe to the BitPay blog for BitPay and bitcoin payment news.

Originally published at blog.bitpay.com on September 21, 2018.

2018’s Sweeping Changes for Customer Success at BitPay was originally published in BitPay On Bitcoin on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Since we started BitPay in 2011, we have worked hard to give merchants powerful tools for accepting blockchain payments from their customers. But part of our work is also providing our merchants with reliable bank settlements. BitPay merchants can get paid in their own local currency (USD, EUR, etc.) for all payments they accept, without the risk of digital currency price volatility.

Most businesses still do business in national currencies. But more are starting to hold and use digital currency, too, from making bill payments to managing their treasuries. That’s part of the reason why we have always offered BitPay merchants the option to receive settlement in the form of Bitcoin. Now we’re excited to announce the second digital currency settlement option for BitPay merchants: Bitcoin Cash.

Since our springtime launch of Bitcoin Cash payment processing, BitPay merchants have been able to accept Bitcoin Cash payments from customers alongside Bitcoin payments. Now they can get their settlement payments in Bitcoin Cash, too. We’ve been hard at work to deliver this new settlement option and close the payments loop for merchants serving Bitcoin Cash customers.

Want to receive settlements from BitPay in Bitcoin Cash or Bitcoin in addition to your supported fiat currency? Just follow these steps:

1. Go to your BitPay dashboard and select Settings, then Settlement.
2. Once you do that, just click Edit next to Cryptocurrency Address.
3. Add your wallet address for either Bitcoin (BTC) or Bitcoin Cash (BCH). And if you need a wallet, check out BitPay's!

We’re excited to continue our work to make the BitPay platform the best way to accept blockchain payments — and to accept payments, period. We’re listening closely to your feedback about what you’d like to see next.

Have feedback or questions? Please send us a message or tweet at us! And subscribe to the BitPay blog so we can let you know about new BitPay tools you can use.

Originally published at blog.bitpay.com on August 29, 2018.

Introducing Bitcoin Cash (BCH) Settlements for BitPay Merchants was originally published in BitPay On Bitcoin on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What’s the Use of Blockchains? How BitPay is Enabling International Business with the Emerging Nigerian Market

Cross-Border Payment Problems

The Internet made it possible to talk to almost anyone in the world within minutes, no matter how far away they are. Unfortunately, most individuals and businesses are still stuck making international or cross-border payments with technology from long before the Internet Age.

Using traditional banking to send cross-border payments remains slow and hard to track. As Erin McClune concluded in her article on this subject, “At the end of the day, money doesn’t cross borders. There is no international wire, just a series of domestic transactions.”¹ Worse still, increased regulation across the Western world (both in the U.S.² and the E.U.³) has led to banks cutting down the number of correspondent banks around the globe.⁴

BitPay’s Solution

Invented in 2008, blockchain payments like Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash allow businesses to send and receive payments globally that arrive within minutes and confirm within an hour. The transactions are straightforward and transparent to all parties involved. BitPay helps businesses by processing the payments using the Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash blockchains.

It might sound counterintuitive, but it is easier and faster to exchange your dollars for Bitcoin, send the Bitcoin to someone in Japan, and have the recipient exchange the Bitcoin for yen than it is to turn dollars into yen through traditional banking channels. But don’t take our word for it. In 2016, McKinsey & Company wrote:

…cross-border payments continue to be expensive, slow and lacking in transparency on both costs and delivery times. In 2015, a McKinsey survey on consumer cross-border payments found that consumers typically pay a fee of €20 to €60 on top of the prevailing foreign-exchange spread. And this fee does not even guarantee timely delivery: although most cross-border payments could in theory be executed in one to two days, the survey revealed that a typical retail cross- border payment took three to five working days to complete.⁵

Blockchain in Practice

This isn’t theory about how blockchain payments can be used someday. Right now, companies are using cross-border blockchain payments through BitPay to make international business easier, faster, and more efficient.

For example, a Fortune 500 company is having trouble moving funds from their Nigerian subsidiary to their bank in Switzerland which requires payment in euros. Nigeria’s liquidity problems and poor banking infrastructure made this transaction difficult.

The blockchain unit within this multinational corporation proposed Bitcoin as a solution to this problem. They came to BitPay and asked for our help. We partnered with a premiere cryptocurrency exchange for much of the African continent and made it happen.

For this payment, the Nigerian subsidiary exchanged their naira for Bitcoin through the African cryptocurrency exchange. The exchange then sent the Bitcoin to BitPay and BitPay processed the Bitcoin into euros to send to the company’s Swiss bank account.

This program started as a test of six cross-border blockchain payments once a month for six months. The result? This company is excited with the solution we provided and hopes to expand this program. Praise from a company this large is quite a stamp of approval. Like the internet did for communication and information, blockchain payments are making international business easier, cheaper, and faster.

Want to learn more? Check out BitPay’s cross-border payments solution and get in touch with our team if you’d like to start using blockchain payments for your international business.

Sources

1. Erin McClune, There is No Such Thing as an International Wire (Payment Views 2014), https://pv.glenbrook.com/there-is-no-such-thing-as-an-international-wire/
2. Thierry Sanvee, Victor Barre, Jonathan Ngo, and Christopher Baranyay, Reinventing The Cross-border Payment Operating Model: How To Combine Regulatory Burden And Business In The Cross-border Payment Industry (Wavestone, 2017), 2: “As part of a global effort to combat terrorist financing, more and more regulations have been put in place over recent years…”
3. Ebru Pakcan, Managing Cross-Border Payment Costs, Risks and Efficiency (Treasury Management International, 2012), 18. The section concerns the European Union’s implementation of SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area) and its effect on cross-border payments.
4. Sanvee, Barre, Ngo, and Baranyay, Reinventing The Cross-border Payment Operating Model, 2: “Banks are trimming down the number of correspondent banks they have around the globe chiefly because costs have increased to the point where maintaining a correspondent bank in some risky areas with low volumes has proved to be unprofitable.”
5. Olivier Denecker, Florent Istace, Pavan K. Masanam, and Marc Niederkorn, “Rethinking correspondent banking,” McKinsey on Payments 9, no. 23 (June 2016), 4.

How Blockchain is Enabling International Business with the Emerging Nigerian Market was originally published in BitPay On Bitcoin on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We started BitPay in 2011 because we knew that the Bitcoin blockchain could make payments faster, safer, and more efficient than ever before. Since then, we have been able to bring Bitcoin’s benefits to millions of people.

Just this year, BitPay has processed more than $1 billion in bitcoin payments, with our payment volume growing more than 300% year over year. Overall, Bitcoin has had an amazing year, with significant growth in value and transaction volume. Other blockchains have also seen extraordinary growth. The top 10 alternative cryptocurrencies now reflect a total of more than $179 billion in market cap value.

There’s a clear demand for blockchain technology around the world.

Why BitPay will process payments on more blockchains

To meet that growing demand, BitPay is moving now to support payments on the other blockchains which Bitcoin has inspired.

We’ve received repeated requests from merchants and users over the years to support additional blockchain payment methods. Many of the top alternative cryptocurrencies’ blockchains make their own innovations on the features which have made Bitcoin great for payments. These range from faster transaction confirmations to greater payment privacy.

Allowing our merchants to accept payments on other blockchains will open up new customer bases to our merchants. Merchants can already reach the hundreds of billions of dollars currently moved in the Bitcoin ecosystem. As BitPay adds support for additional blockchains, our merchants will be able to serve new customers using other emerging currencies for payments.

Due to the Bitcoin blockchain’s success and rising adoption, demand for Bitcoin transactions is outstripping capacity, causing miner fees to rise on the Bitcoin network. With multiple blockchain payment options, our merchants’ customers will be able to choose one with features, confirmation times, and miner fee levels that work for them.

We will continue to build for Bitcoin payments

We will continue to build on the Bitcoin blockchain without interruption. We’re examining every option we can use to allow Bitcoin users to continue to affordably and reliably pay for the things they need, including the current development efforts on the Lightning Network.

We are already working in various parts of our platform to support transactions with SegWit. Segwit is a new set of features in Bitcoin which can reduce the bitcoin miner fee cost for transactions by over 40% on average. However, with average transaction fees already around $20, we understand that Bitcoin alone cannot handle the current demand for blockchain payments.

We’re starting with Bitcoin Cash

We added Bitcoin Cash (BCH) support to the BitPay wallet app in September of this year. Since then, we’ve had growing demand from our merchants and their customers to enable Bitcoin Cash support for our payment processing services, too.

Bitcoin Cash is a blockchain created by a fork of the Bitcoin network. It allows for payments with significantly faster network confirmations and significantly lower miner fee costs. You can see a recent (12/15/2017) comparison of average Bitcoin Cash miner fees vs. average Bitcoin miner fees below.

Source: https://cashvscore.com/

As we work to adopt the scaling technologies being developed in the blockchain payments space, allowing purchasers to use their Bitcoin Cash is one important step in the right direction.

We will begin adding support for a Bitcoin Cash payment option this year, starting with BitPay Card loads. All BitPay invoices will include a Bitcoin Cash payment option by default in early 2018.

What this means for BitPay merchants

Your customers will continue to be able to use Bitcoin for purchases, but they will also be able to choose to use Bitcoin Cash or another blockchain payment method to complete their payments.

We will be notifying you well in advance of the launch of new payment methods, and you will be have the ability to opt out of offering any currency option to customers. You will also continue to only receive the settlement type you have chosen, with zero volatility risk from price swings.

View our exchange rates and exchange rates API for BCH.

What this means for BitPay wallet users

The BitPay wallet already includes optional Bitcoin Cash support. If you want to use Bitcoin Cash to load your BitPay Card or pay a BitPay merchant, you’ll be able to use your BitPay or Copay wallet.

BitPay BCH invoices will use the BitPay and Copay wallets’ BCH address format by default. Your Copay or BitPay wallet will immediately be compatible for payments to BitPay BCH invoices.

What’s next for other blockchains?

The BitPay team has been hard at work to prepare our platform and our products for multi-blockchain payments. We will be looking closely at network hashing power, security, usefulness for payments, adoption, and market value as key factors in our decisions on which blockchain payments our platform will support.

Please stay tuned! We’re listening to your feedback as we build our payment tools to support additional blockchains.

BitPay Will Process Payments on Multiple Blockchains, Starting with Bitcoin Cash was originally published in BitPay On Bitcoin on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Bitcoin Payments Leader BitPay Raising $30 Million in Series B Funding Led by Aquiline Technology Growth

ATLANTA — December 6, 2017 — Blockchain payments technology platform BitPay announced today that it is raising $30M in a strategic Series B funding round led by Aquiline Technology Growth (ATG), a fund managed by Aquiline Capital Partners that invests in early- and growth-stage financial technology companies.

BitPay’s platform gives businesses and individuals powerful tools for secure blockchain payment acceptance, savings, and spending. In 2017, the company has achieved a record year for merchant payment processing on the Bitcoin blockchain, now approaching $2 billion in annualized payment volumes. BitPay’s open source wallet platform has seen growing consumer adoption, recently reaching the milestone of $3B in monthly user payments. BitPay’s prepaid Visa® debit card, which lets bitcoin users turn bitcoin into dollars, pounds, or Euros for use with Visa® merchants, has also seen significant year over year growth.

“We’re proud of our team’s work to grow BitPay’s impact and revenues to this point,” said BitPay CEO Stephen Pair. “We’ve been able to solve some of our customers’ biggest payment problems, from multimillion dollar B2B payments to day to day expenses. Continually improving our customers’ experience with BitPay is a priority for us as we plan our next steps for product development.”

BitPay is raising this series B at an important time in its growth. The company will be using this funding for strategic steps toward solving the problems of the world’s most difficult and valuable payments. It has already made inroads this year into cross-border supply chain payments and other payments underserved by traditional credit card and banking infrastructure.

“BitPay plays an important role in the crypto-currency ecosystem by helping consumers, businesses and other financial institutions seamlessly accept and transfer Bitcoin for goods and services in the real world,” stated Max Chee, Head of Aquiline Technology Growth. “We have been very impressed with BitPay’s financial performance, including 700% top-line growth, and look forward to supporting its ambitious plans in the sector.”

ATG is a fund managed by Aquiline Capital Partners, a private equity firm investing in businesses across the financial services sector in banking and credit, insurance, investment management and markets, and financial technology and services. In addition to ATG, Aquiline manages three financial services funds and has raised over $6.5 billion of capital through its affiliated funds and co-investments.

“Aquiline brings a wealth of expertise in the financial services industry that makes them the right partner for BitPay,” added Mr. Pair. “We’re at an exciting time in payment history. We know that we have a long way to go, but we plan to build the blockchain payment platform that changes how money works on the internet.”

The company has big goals for 2018 post-raise, including key engineering hires, regulatory licensing, technology acquisitions, and expansion into emerging markets in Asia — one of BitPay’s fastest-growing regions for transactions and wallet adoption.

In 2014, BitPay raised a $30M series A round from investors including Index Ventures, Founder’s Fund, Felicis Ventures, RRE Ventures, and Sir Richard Branson.

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About BitPay
The first and most experienced company in bitcoin payments, BitPay builds powerful tools for secure bitcoin payment acceptance, savings, and spending. The company has offices in North America, Europe, and South America and processes payments for industry giants in online commerce, from Microsoft to Gyft and Newegg.com. For more information on BitPay and what it’s doing in the world of bitcoin, visit www.bitpay.com or email media@bitpay.com.

About Aquiline Technology Growth
Aquiline Technology Growth invests in early- and growth-stage technology companies that are bringing innovation to the insurance and broader financial services ecosystems. ATG is managed by Aquiline Capital Partners. Its team of professionals has experience in technology and financial services and is supported by its colleagues at Aquiline Capital Partners, strategic partners, and an active group of industry experts. For more information on ATG, please visit: http://www.aquiline.com/atg.

About Aquiline Capital Partners LLC
Aquiline Capital Partners, founded in 2005, is a private equity firm based in New York investing in businesses across the financial services sector in banking and credit, insurance, investment management and markets, and financial technology and services. For more information about Aquiline, its investment professionals, and its portfolio companies, please visit: www.aquiline.com.

Media Contacts

BitPay:
James Walpole, Marketing and Communications Manager

media@bitpay.com

(404) 793–6231

Aquiline Capital Partners:
Brunswick Group
Alex Yankus / Harry Mayfield
212–333–3810
AQUILINE@brunswickgroup.com

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For US Residents: The BitPay Visa® Prepaid Card is issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank, member FDIC, pursuant to a license from Visa, U.S.A. Inc. “Metropolitan” and “Metropolitan Commercial Bank” are registered trademarks of Metropolitan Commercial Bank © 2014. Use of the Card is subject to the terms and conditions of the applicable Cardholder Agreement and fee schedule, if any.

For Non-US Residents: The BitPay Visa® Prepaid Card is issued by Wave Crest Holdings Limited pursuant to a license from Visa® Europe. Visa® is a registered trademark of Visa Incorporated. Wave Crest Holdings Limited is a licensed electronic money institution by the Financial Services Commission, Gibraltar.

Bitcoin Payments Leader BitPay Raising $30 Million in Series B Funding Led by Aquiline Technology… was originally published in BitPay On Bitcoin on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It’s 2017, six years after we started BitPay and nearly nine years since the Bitcoin experiment began. If you’ve not been living under a rock, you’ve seen that the bitcoin price and daily transaction count have taken to new heights this year.

Sources: coindesk.com (Bitcoin Price Chart) and bitinfocharts.com (Bitcoin Transactions Chart)

Still, if you’re like most people, you probably don’t recognize how bitcoin is quietly changing the playing field of payments.

As the world’s leading bitcoin payments platform, we get a deep look into how bitcoin is solving real payment problems. To the extent we’ve helped to solve those problems, we’ve seen major growth this year. We’re now on pace to process over $1B annually in bitcoin payment acceptance and payouts, and we’ve already grown our payments dollar volume 328% year-over-year from 2016.

With more transaction volume, our revenues have also grown. That revenue growth has allowed us to add several new members to our team as we develop our products for scalable bitcoin payments adoption. Now we’re looking forward to more opportunities to solve big payment problems in the year ahead.

To that end, we want to share some of the most exciting stories and stats from our 2017 so far.

BitPay Merchants Get a Boost

While we explore new use cases for bitcoin payments, we’ve continued to see growth in bitcoin spending with BitPay’s merchants, from electronics sales to precious metals purchases. Altogether, BitPay’s merchants are receiving $110M+ in bitcoin payments per month.

Major electronics retailer and long-time BitPay merchant NewEgg has more than doubled its bitcoin sales from last year. Other flagship BitPay merchants have also enjoyed a prosperous year, with many merchants receiving over a $1M a month in payments from customers. Precious metals broker JM Bullion gained nearly $4M in bitcoin sales in the month of June alone.

When BitPay merchants announce that they are accepting bitcoin payments, they often see an increase in new customers from the bitcoin world. And since BitPay only charges 1% rather than the 2–3% fees charged for credit card transactions, BitPay merchants processing high sales volumes can see significant savings every month. These positive side-effects will grow as bitcoin gains more new users in the years ahead.

Bitcoin Payments Make Inroads Around the World

Where is all this growth coming from? Payments to BitPay merchants in Europe and North America continue to grow steadily. But we’ve also seen a more than doubling in transactions going to Latin American merchants since August of last year. Here’s a current breakdown of our transaction counts by merchant region.

Merchants in the Asia-Pacific region now receive a significant portion of our monthly transactions. We have continued our expansion into this region through our partnership with AsiaPay. AsiaPay is one of the largest payment processors in Asia, serving clients including Cathay Pacific, Nike, Tesla, and Under Armour. Now companies like these can choose to easily accept bitcoin payments from their Asian cu stomers by activating AsiaPay’s BitPay integration.

In Europe we continue working with major payment service providers including PPRO, PaySafe and WireCard. In Latin America, we have partnered with PayU to help international businesses receive cross-border settlements for credit card payments and other local payment methods in countries like Argentina. Our business to business bitcoin billing tool gives these settlements the speed of an email and the security of the world’s most powerful blockchain.

Real Estate Sellers Turn to Bitcoin

In 2017 we’ve focused closely on bringing bitcoin’s value to bear on the problems of high-value payments, which are often subject to slow bank transfer times or high processing fees and fraud rates with credit cards.

To that end, we’ve onboarded several real estate companies and processed several 6 and 7-figure real estate purchases this year, including a recent deal which garnered press coverage from Fortune, Forbes, and CNNMoney. But perhaps our favorite storycame from one buyer to whom bitcoin not only gave back time — the bitcoin payment cleared in one hour instead of the several days for a traditional bank transfer — but also enough money to buy a new sportscar.

Bitcoin Solves B2B Payments Problems

Speaking of high-value payments, there’s one area which most commentators on bitcoin are likely to ignore: B2B and supply chain payments.

These payments from suppliers, resellers, franchisees, affiliates, and subsidiaries happen behind the scenes and gain few headlines, but they make up a significant portion of global payments. They also represent an underserved market for financial technology. Companies still rely on outdated bank wire transfer systems involving multiple intermediaries, high fees, and inconvenient manual paperwork processing.

Bitcoin has changed that. With payments on a blockchain, businesses anywhere in the world can receive payments more quickly and more cheaply than with international wire transfers. BitPay charges a 1% fee to process bitcoin payments of any size (up to several million dollars or more), from anywhere on earth. We deposit funds into our clients’ bank accounts in just one business day.

We recently profiled this killer use case with cosmetics wholesaler Bellatorra. This company had just expanded into the Asian market when it was approached by a Chinese reseller which wished to buy wholesale with bitcoin. Now, with the help of bitcoin and BitPay, Bellatorra can reach new customers without the limitations of traditional cross-border payments:

“This technology will let us move into other new markets like Indonesia and India and reach up to three-quarters of the world’s population with our products.” — Nathan Halsey, Bellatorra CEO

Some of our other international B2B clients include a Philippines-based call center, a Netherlands-based management consulting firm, several global software vendors, a data center, an advertising company, and a European video game marketplace.

Our business to business billing isn’t just for large companies. Service providers have been using it for years. We are currently working with several of the largest law firms in America, including Morrison & Forrester. The firm is accepting bitcoin via BitPay for legal services payments from clients vetted in advance.

Bitcoin Payouts Become a Key Tool for International Platforms

This year BitPay’s bitcoin payouts have become an important driver of volume and an essential part of some of our top clients’ affiliate, employee, and marketplace strategies.

We’ve gained major payouts adoption particularly from affiliate marketplaces and forex platforms in 2017 so far. Many major forex platforms in Europe now include bitcoin options for account deposits and withdrawals. Affiliate marketplaces are starting to follow suit. These businesses need to send payments to multiple international endpoints on a regular basis. The problem? Payouts via wire transfer are costly for small amounts, and other services’ fees and country limitations make receiving small payouts impractical for some affiliates.

BitPay can do mass payouts much better. Bitcoin is a universal payment method which works anywhere the Internet is available. All a business has to do is pre-fund a batch payment with BitPay for a flat 1% fee, and BitPay issues the mass payouts within one business day. Once sent, payouts take only an hour on average to become spendable in recipients’ bitcoin wallets.

Source and citations: https://blog.bitpay.com/forex-and-bitcoin/
* Based on average of top 10 US banks
**Not including processing time

One of our most recent new payouts clients is major affiliate marketplace Clicksure. Here’s what they had to say about their decision to add bitcoin payouts:

“We wanted to provide multiple payout options for our clients due to the simple fact [that] there is not a ‘one-fits-all’ payment solution that is suitable for everyone. Our affiliates are based in all ‘4 corners of the world’ and we are seeing a growing trend of users looking to explore alternative payment options, that offer more than what they get with the traditional payment methods.

BitPay’s bitcoin payouts provide a faster and less costly way for ClickSure affiliates to get paid out their sales commissions.” — ClickSure Communications Manager Ben Marshall

The BitPay Card Hits Its Stride

This May marked the first anniversary of the launch of the BitPay Card, our Visa® prepaid debit card made for bitcoin users. We now have more than 33,000 cardholders, and our card load volume in our US card program alone grew by 1583% year over year (from August 2016).

We’re pleased that the BitPay Card is doing just what we wanted — helping people who live life on bitcoin get access to Visa merchants® with a dollar-loadable prepaid Visa® debit card. This use of the BitPay Card even got a nice mention in NBC’s story about bitcoin’s inroads into daily life for Middle America.

The BitPay Card isn’t just for the United States. We expanded to a full Eurozone market coverage in May through a partnership with Wave Crest Holdings, Ltd. We continue to work to make the BitPay Card the best option available in the European territories. Now we’re working to bring the BitPay Card to even more new markets. If you want to be notified when we come to more markets, stay tuned by subscribing to our blog updates!

The BitPay Wallet Platform Enters Top Tier

The BitPay and Copay wallets are important elements of BitPay’s work on the bitcoin consumer payment experience. Bitcoin adoption has soared this year, and our position as one of the most secure bitcoin wallets available has helped us remain consistently in the top US app store results for bitcoin wallets for months.

Currently wallet users are now sending and securing over $1B in assets every month on BitPay’s wallet platform, with $1.9 billion sent in the month of August alone. We now have more than one million Copay and BitPay wallets, with several thousand new wallets added every day.

We’ve built opportunities for user feedback into our app from its earliest days. This has paid off in helping us to hear what our users want and respond quickly. It’s also yielded some fine reviews from bitcoiners who are counting on our wallet for their bitcoin transactions.

Source: BitPay Wallet Google Play listing

What’s Next?

We’re looking forward to a great 2018. As we grow, we are putting more focus on improving our products and our customer support experience to support the rapid growth we’ve seen. We know that we have a responsibility as a leader in this space to not just gain bitcoin adoption but to keep it.

We’ve seen what it’s like to delight someone with the ease and speed of the bitcoin payment experience. Now we plan to scale that experience to the millions of people who rely on BitPay products for bitcoin payments — and to the tens and hundreds of millions who will.

Want more stories of how BitPay and bitcoin are changing payments? Subscribe now to get our blog posts delivered to your inbox.

For US Residents: The BitPay Visa® Prepaid Card is issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank, member FDIC, pursuant to a license from Visa, U.S.A. Inc. “Metropolitan” and “Metropolitan Commercial Bank” are registered trademarks of Metropolitan Commercial Bank © 2014. Use of the Card is subject to the terms and conditions of the applicable Cardholder Agreement and fee schedule, if any.

For Non-US Residents: The BitPay Visa® Prepaid Card is issued by Wave Crest Holdings Limited pursuant to a license from Visa® Europe. Visa® is a registered trademark of Visa Incorporated. Wave Crest Holdings Limited is a licensed electronic money institution by the Financial Services Commission, Gibraltar.

BitPay’s Bitcoin Payments Volume Grows by 328%, On Pace for $1 Billion Yearly was originally published in BitPay On Bitcoin on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Would you leave your purse or wallet lying around? Would you toss it into some corner of your house when you get home? Probably not, especially if the wallet had gold coins that could potentially grow in value.

Your bitcoin wallet is not any different. In a previous post, we showed you how to protect your funds by storing them in a multisignature wallet. Today we’re going to show you how to securely back up and protect your wallet’s private keys themselves.

Understanding Private Keys and Wallet Backup Phrases

The first time you open the BitPay app and create a new wallet, you will see this screen:

At this point, you’ll need to back up your wallet. This means writing down a twelve word backup phrase (like the one shown below) and keeping it safe. It is not secure to take a screenshot or picture of your 12 word backup phrase. Never share your backup phrase with anyone — even BitPay — unless you want them to have access to your money.

These 12 words can be used to regenerate your bitcoin wallet’s “private keys”. Private keys generate the digital signatures required to spend your bitcoin.

Simply put, a private key is sort of like the password to your email address, except it can’t be reset. Since the backup phrase gives a bitcoin wallet access to your private key, you can use the 12-word backup phrase to recover your bitcoin if your device is stolen or damaged.

Backup phrases are a simple, secure way to protect and restore private keys. But this means your bitcoin is only as secure as your backup phrase. You might want to take extra care to secure and protect your backup phrase once you’ve written it down.

Tips for Private Key and Backup Phrase Security

Before you think about how to secure your bitcoin wallet backup phrase and private keys, count the cost. It’s likely not worth it to spend $1000 to store a backup phrase with $20 worth of bitcoin. But you will probably be alright with spending more time and money on securing the private keys for a large amount of bitcoin.

Here are some ways you can secure your backup phrase and your private keys when you create a bitcoin wallet.

Recording Your Backup Phrase

Be sure to write down your backup phrase on a strong, durable sheet of paper with a quality pen. You can also secure that paper in a protective sleeve. The key is to make sure the ink and paper hold up over time.

Storing Your Backup Phrase

Instead of storing your backup phrase in a physical wallet or box, you may want to store your backup phrase in a fireproof and waterproof safe or lockbox. If you wish to share emergency access to your wallet in case of accident or death, you can entrust multiple copies to trusted friends and family whom you can trust to store the phrase securely.

If you want to take your backup phrase storage to a new level of security, you can keep your backup phrase in a safety deposit box at a bank.

This recommendation comes with several caveats. First, you must be sure that you trust the stability and integrity of the bank. Some banks in countries with unstable financial systems have confiscated the contents of safety deposit boxes in the past. Second, safety deposit boxes can cost at least $60 annually, and you may have to wait for over a year to get access. Finally, the contents of a safety deposit box in the US are not FDIC insured, so there is not a safety net for your bitcoin wealth.

Securing Your Private Keys

Once your backup phrase is secure, you can focus on securing your wallet and your private keys on your device. In case your device is stolen, you don’t want the thief to be able to access your bitcoin. There are two things you can do to prevent this.

Using an App PIN

To prevent a thief from accessing your backup phrase through your app, be sure to set a strong PIN lock on your phone. You can also set a PIN specifically for the BitPay app, as shown in the image below on the left. Here are the steps to set a PIN in your app:

Open “Settings” > Select “Lock App” > Select “Lock by PIN” > Enter Your PIN

Note that this method only provides security against non-technically skilled thieves. If thieves can access your smartphone hard drive, a PIN will not prevent them from accessing your private keys.

Using Spending Passwords

Fortunately, the BitPay wallet makes it easy to encrypt private keys with a spending password, as shown in the image above on the right. The wallet will prompt you to enter this password every time you initiate a bitcoin payment, and the password will protect the private keys on your device.

Here are the steps to set a spending password for any of your wallets:

Open “Settings” > Select Wallet > Select “Request Spending Password” > Enter Your Spending Password

Remember that this spending password will not protect your private keys if your backup phrase is lost.

Learn More About Bitcoin Security

Want to learn more about securing your bitcoin? Check out our wallet security page, or browse through our library of wallet help articles.

Want more tips for bitcoin security? Subscribe now to get our blog posts delivered to your inbox.

How to Keep Your Bitcoin Safe: Private Key Security Tips for BitPay Wallet Users was originally published in BitPay On Bitcoin on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The good news? The BitPay wallet is already among the most secure true bitcoin wallets available today. You can secure your funds in the app with a spending password or PIN, but the underlying architecture of the wallet lets you take security even further.

Most bitcoin wallet addresses only have one private key that can sign and authorize transactions. If that key is stolen or lost, you won’t be the only person that can spend your bitcoin.

One solution lies in multi-signature bitcoin wallets.

What is a Multi-Signature Wallet?

A multi-signature wallet requires several private keys to authorize bitcoin transactions. The multi-signature bitcoin address structure lets you splits those private keys across multiple devices or among multiple people. You choose how many devices or people (“copayers”) you will share the wallet with. You also choose how many copayers need to sign off on a transaction.

For example, you can create a multi-signature bitcoin wallet, choose two copayers, and require two private key signatures for every bitcoin transaction. This would mean that both of the copayers would have to sign off before money can move from your wallet.

Why Use a Multi-Signature Wallet?

With a multi-signature wallet setup like the one above, a thief would need to steal both private keys to access your bitcoin. Even if a thief got one of your private keys, he wouldn’t be able to do anything with your money. He would need at least two private keys to make a transaction.

A multi-signature wallet setup can also protect your private keys against operating system vulnerabilities and security bugs. If you have a 2-of-2 wallet with private keys on two different operating systems (say, a Windows desktop and an iOS smartphone), you won’t have to worry about your funds if one of those platforms gets compromised.

As you can see, a multi-signature wallet secures your bitcoin better than just about anything else available today.

Remember that owning a multi-signature wallet not only increases your security but also your personal responsibility. You will need to make sure to securely back upeach of your two copaying private keys. In the example above, if you lost either of the two devices with which you shared your wallet and do not have their wallet backup phrases, you will lose access to your bitcoin.

However you choose to set up your multi-signature wallet, think through your security setup and act carefully to keep your backup phrases safe and accessible.

Getting Started with a Multi-Signature Wallet

Ready to get started with multi-signature wallet security? The following video shows how to create a multi-signature wallet and send a multi-signature payment in the BitPay wallet app:

Upgrade Your Bitcoin Security with a Multi-Signature Wallet was originally published in BitPay On Bitcoin on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.