Point-of-sale (POS) solutions giant Ingenico is expanding its scope of Bitcoin Payments support thanks to a partnership with BitPay.
Paris-based Ingenico's terminals are among the most commonly used among merchants worldwide. Every merchant using Ingenico's Telium system will now have the ability to turn on bitcoin payments after installing the BitPay app and opening a BitPay account. Upon checkout, a QR code is generated and scanned for the deposit of bitcoins, which are paid via the shopper's mobile device.
Ingenico began supporting bitcoin earlier this year through a partnership with Paymium, a bitcoin payment processor, also based in France. That integration reportedly enabled bitcoin acceptance on POS terminals in Europe. The latest brings bitcoin to brick-and-mortar shops working with the Telium platform worldwide, in addition to the BitPay-supported merchants already using an Ingenico terminal.
Traditionally, it has been easier for e-commerce stores to accept bitcoin, and by extension, partnerships making it possible for thousands of online shops to accept bitcoin in one fell swoop have been more common. The expansion to brick-and-mortar stores can, in theory, have a meaningful impact upon overall bitcoin usage, although such integrations have seemingly failed to achieve this vision in the past.
Previously, Ingenico was reportedly involved in a project led by the Canadian government to develop a government-backed p2p digital cash. The government divested from the project last year, its eventual fate unclear, although the general concept of government-backed p2p cash has since been revived elsewhere in 2015.
For BitPay, the announcement is a slight boost during a time of unmet expectations for bitcoin usage. Recently, the household name shed a significant portion of its workforce.
