BitPay Exceeds 1,000 Merchants Accepting Bitcoin

[BitPay Business Solutions]

Official Post Here:

http://blog.bitpay.com/

Orlando, FL - BitPay, Inc., the world leader in bitcoin business solutions, announces it has over 1,000 businesses using its service to accept bitcoin digital currency for purchases.

“The sheer volume of new merchants has started to explode over the last month as more businesses begin to see the value in accepting bitcoin payments," says Anthony Gallippi, co-founder and CEO of BitPay. "By accepting bitcoin, a business can receive a payment from any country, instantly, with no risk of fraud. No other payment technology can offer this level of functionality.”

Thanks to everyone who helped us reach this milestone!  We are excited about the future of bitcoin.

Original Articles:

http://bitcoinmagazine.net/bitpay-exceeds-1000-merchants-accepting-bitcoin/


Picked up already:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/bitpay-exceeds-1000-merchants-accepting-bitcoin-2012-09-11

http://www.finextra.com/news/announcement.aspx?pressreleaseid=46214

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitpay-exceeds-1-000-merchants-130000458.html

http://pymnts.com/news/businesswire-feed/2012/september/11/bitpay-exceeds-1000-merchants-accepting-bitcoin-20120911005855/

http://www.virtual-strategy.com/2012/09/11/bitpay-exceeds-1000-merchants-accepting-bitcoin

http://itbriefing.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=324838&newlang=eng&topic=15&catid=41

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[kentrolla]

grats! well done

[unclescrooge]

Congrats guys

[Jan]

Congratulations! Well done and well executed. In the end hard work pays off.

[Endgame]

Well done, and keep up the good work!

[justusranvier]

This is exactly what Bitcoin needs.

[BCB]

Great work guys!  This is definitely the kind of news bitcoin needs.   Maybe you could start a thread for each of those business to counteract the forum spamming by the multiple Pirate/NMW threads!  Would love to learn more about those businesses.  Don't see a list on your site.

Thanks.

[BitPay Business Solutions]

Great work guys!  This is definitely the kind of news bitcoin needs.   Maybe you could start a thread for each of those business to counteract the forum spamming by the multiple Pirate/NMW threads!  Would love to learn more about those businesses.  Don't see a list on your site.

Thanks.

We don't publish a list on our site.  However, we do have about a dozen merchants that we show on our site as examples for different types of businesses:

https://bitpay.com/featured-merchants

And, we have started another blog that will discuss more in-depth how different types of businesses accept bitcoin:

http://www.howtoacceptbitcoin.com

[BCB]

Good stuff.  Thanks.

[justusranvier]

Maybe you could start a thread for each of those business to counteract the forum spamming by the multiple Pirate/NMW threads!

Maybe they could start their own forum.

[BCB]

Maybe you could start a thread for each of those business to counteract the forum spamming by the multiple Pirate/NMW threads!

Maybe they could start their own forum.

I think that is coming.... Others have tried, but I there is more incentive and interest now. 

[BitPay Business Solutions]

I'm not sure that running a forum is the best use of our time, compared to spending the time talking to new businesses.  We will be polishing up the blog and putting more in-depth discussions on there.  The one for Crowdfunding with Max keiser is a good one, it talks about the reasons why he likes bitcoin, and some how-to videos.

http://www.howtoacceptbitcoin.com

for now comments are disabled because we don't have time to monitor it, but we may open that up in the future.

[justusranvier]

I'm not sure that running a forum is the best use of our time, compared to spending the time talking to new businesses.  We will be polishing up the blog and putting more in-depth discussions on there.  The one for Crowdfunding with Max keiser is a good one, it talks about the reasons why he likes bitcoin, and some how-to videos.

Obviously I don't know any of you personally, nor am I privy to your financials or customer data, so the rest of this post should be regarded as the uninformed speculation of someone who's thinking out loud and probably nothing you haven't already considered.

You're involved in a potentially disruptive technology like Bitcoin because your goal is more than merely being profitable enough to pay the bills and keep food on the table. You want to eventually be a household name - a verb. This means you need at least another four orders of magnitude of growth from where you are now.

Your first thousand customers have primarily been early adopters and enthusiasts which are a good to get started with, but won't be enough to break into the mainstream. Mainstream businesses are going to include a lot of people who are suspicious of the technology, or even hostile to it, but there is a phrase that will get your foot in the door anywhere: "Our customers typically see their bottom line improve by X% shortly after signing up with us" where X is suitably impressive. Your press release didn't include any sales volume numbers, which makes me think that number is not nearly as impressive as the number of signups.

The best way to make sure "X" is high enough to really contribute to your momentum would be to make sure your customers know not just how to accept bitcoins, but how to fully take advantage of this new capability by selling into markets which were previously unavailable to them. Some customers are going to "get it" immediately and others will need some help in order to become the success stories that you need to break into the mainstream. This is very important to do because otherwise you'll just saturate the enthusiast market and stop growing. Whatever means you decide to employ it's vital to make sure that your customers learn how to fully benefit from your service as quickly as possible because their success will determine how far you're able to go. Also anything you can do to expand new markets for your customers, like working with partners to get remittances flowing into new countries and/or setting up bitcoin exchanges there will fuel your own growth by increasing the number of people in the world who have access to bitcoins.

[BitPay Business Solutions]

Also anything you can do to expand new markets for your customers, like working with partners to get remittances flowing into new countries and/or setting up bitcoin exchanges there will fuel your own growth by increasing the number of people in the world who have access to bitcoins.

Yes, this is exactly why we started the Integrator program.  Tech support and hand-holding for a new technology like bitcoin is best handled as close to the business as possible.  The guys at http://bittiraha.fi are a great example for others around the world to emulate. 

https://bitpay.com/bitcoin-integration-partners

[SysRun]

how cute, its like a lil credit card company. keep up the good work guys and you'll be bought up by one of the big boys soon.

[BCB]

how cute, its like a lil credit card company. keep up the good work guys and you'll be bought up by one of the big boys soon.

Are  you contributing to the dialogue or just trolling??

[justusranvier]

Yes, this is exactly why we started the Integrator program.  Tech support and hand-holding for a new technology like bitcoin is best handled as close to the business as possible.  The guys at http://bittiraha.fi are a great example for others around the world to emulate. 

https://bitpay.com/bitcoin-integration-partners

I guess I should have given a more concrete example.

I'm fairly familari with Peru, having visited it extensively and I have (former) inlaws who live there. There are a lot of Peruvians who have disposable income, but no bank accounts or credit/debit cards. The country receives a substantial amount of remittances and the people there want imported goods, especially consumer electronics.

Right now few Peurvians know about Bitcoin, have any way of obtaining bitcoins, (and most importantly from your point of view) don't know about your customers and what they sell. Anything that closes the circle in a way that makes your customers obtain more sales makes your service more compelling to businesses that aren't your customers yet, not to mention the additional export opportunities that could be made available to Peruvian businesses.

I'm sure there are many other countries that could be used as an example, but that was what I meant by "selling into markets which were previously unavailable to them".

[MoneyIsDebt]

I've been looking for a way to accept bitcoin AND credit cards / paypal whatever, but where I as a merchant get paid in bitcoins. I.e. any fiat payments are converted by the provider. I'd accept a delay and the exchange rate risk. Right now I'd have to use bitpay + something else, and manually go buy bitcoins on an exchange.

[BCB]

I've been looking for a way to accept bitcoin AND credit cards / paypal whatever, but where I as a merchant get paid in bitcoins. I.e. any fiat payments are converted by the provider. I'd accept a delay and the exchange rate risk. Right now I'd have to use bitpay + something else, and manually go buy bitcoins on an exchange.

What's holding you up?

[Stephen Gornick]

says Anthony Gallippi, co-founder and CEO of BitPay. "By accepting bitcoin, a business can receive a payment from any country, instantly, with no risk of fraud.”

"instant" and "no risk" are pretty concrete terms.  

From another thread:

[double spending] is not a problem for any business that uses Bit-Pay.  We notify them (or their server) immediately when the payment is received with 0 confirmations.  We have never seen a double spend in over a year and over 5000 transactions.  But, for high dollar amounts, there's no problem in waiting for an hour to be sure.

So I'm unclear ...  does the merchant bear the risk of a double spend if one happens?  So then to get "no risk of fraud" the merchant would need to wait the certain level of confirmations appropriate (e.g., six confirmations)?

If so, then one word or the other between "instant" and "no risk" is inaccurate.

Obviously, for a bricks and mortar business like a restaurant this isn't a concern, but perhaps I am selling expensive software online for digital delivery (and thus it is downloaded before I as a merchant might discover a double spend had occurred.

[Stephen Gornick]

So I'm unclear ...  does the merchant bear the risk of a double spend if one happens?

I now see how this is configurable by the merchant:

HIGH speed confirmations typically take 5-10 seconds, and can be used for digital goods or low-risk items.  LOW speed confirmations take about 1 hour, and should be used for high-value items.

So High risk/speed is 0/unconfirmed (presumably).  and Low risk/speed is six confirmations (presumably), ... what is Medium risk/speed?  One confirmation?

I see that if there was a double spend, the merchant is alerted by e-mail and POST.

If at any point we detect a payment to be INVALID you will receive an email and a secure POST immediately. This will only happen if you select the Medium or High risk settings.  There is no chance of an invalid payment for Low risk settings.