BitPay is to process Payments on additional blockchains, according to a company blog post.
It has made the decision due to popular demand, the company says. Following "repeated requests" for access to blockchains in addition to that of Bitcoin, BitPay has now recognised that other blockchains have their own advantages, and that allowing merchants to accept other cryptocurrencies will be a boon to its business model.
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BitPay is a Bitcoin payment processor from Atlanta, US. The BitPay Card allows customers to pay with Bitcoin at retail outlets.
It began support of Bitcoin Cash in September of this year. Bitcoin Cash is an offspring of Bitcoin, spawned on the 1st of August 2017 when some on the Bitcoin Blockchain decided to go their own way when the SegWit fork was activated. In November, it looked to be on its way to usurping the dominance of Bitcoin when its value exploded while Bitcoin's plummeted following the cancellation of the SegWit2x fork. Many users switched support to Bitcoin Cash, particularly in Asia.
As BitPay outlines in its blog, Bitcoin Cash has some advantages over Bitcoin, including smaller transaction fees. BitPay invoices will include an option to pay with Bitcoin Cash by early 2018.
The company says that it is "hard at work" preparing to move onto additional blockchains in the new year: "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."
Last week, we reported on BitPay activating the Bitcoin Payment Protocol. This is a now mandatory system which negates the issue of payments being sent to the wrong address, or being of the wrong amount. This was created as a solution to the problem of refunds, which are often unfeasible with Bitcoin due to transaction costs and long processing times.
The number of companies accepting Bitcoin is growing rapidly – BitPay was processing 200,000 transactions by December of 2016, according to the company’s website. A few months ago, the company signed an agreement with Amazon through which gift cards became purchasable with Bitcoin. It also partnered with Aliant this year, further extending its reach.
