Euro Pacific Precious Metals has teamed up with BitPay to allow customers to pay for precious metal purchases with Bitcoin .
The company specializes in selling physical gold, silver, platinum and palladium in various forms such as coins and bars. It markets and sells them to customers looking to add precious metals to their long-term investment portfolios. The company aims to price their products based closely on the market value of the commodities going into them. Thus, there isn't much room to pay fees while maintaining sustainable profit margins. A provider like BitPay, who has plans charging a flat fee per month, is therefore ideal.
Said Michael Finger, director or marketing:
“Bitcoin offers tremendous benefits as a medium of exchange for both our domestic and international customers. A wire transfer of fiat funds can be slow and expensive for the customer, and credit card fees are too high to absorb at the low premiums we offer. Not only does BitPay’s service make business sense, but we are excited about giving owners of bitcoin the opportunity to inexpensively and reliably convert any excess holdings into precious metals rather than back to fiat currency.”
Despite the payment advantages, the arrival of bitcoin Payments to Euro Pacific makes for an interesting partnership for the firm. It is led by Peter Schiff, who chairs Euro Pacific's group of financial firms, including the asset management business, Euro Pacific Capital. Schiff has been a long time bull of investing in gold, while bearish on the dollar. As such, his views on the dollar and government control of the monetary system parallel those of many of Bitcoin's backers.
However, despite the comparisons, Schiff has been skeptical about bitcoins as an asset, often comparing them to tulip mania. Even when disregarding them as an investment, he has acknowledged their positive trait of removing monetary strength from governments, although he has remained steadfast of his favor in investing in gold.
For BitPay, Euro Pacific becomes one of over 20,000 merchants now supported, including big names like TigerDirect and Virgin Atlantic. On the news,Tony Gallippi, CEO of BitPay commented:
“We are very excited to form a partnership with Euro Pacific Precious Metals, especially right on the heels of our collaboration with Toshiba. BitPay is honored to have a role in helping such global and established companies integrate bitcoin into their payment systems.”
With Toshiba, he's referring to their integration of bitcoin payments into their VisualTouch point-of-sale payment systems. The systems are used by over 6,000 companies worldwide.
