BitPay is slowly dying?

[Husires]

65,571 average transactions processed per month. which makes the number of daily transactions less than 3k transactions.
It is considered small when compared to the companies that use BTCpayServer.

Source: https://bitpay.com/stats/

chart above say that majority of people paying via bitpay using altcoins

I do not know how long bitpay activity will continue if the number of transactions continues like this.

You can read some of the discussions on Twitter here:

• https://twitter.com/pavlenex/status/1480953699514126342
• https://twitter.com/NicolasDorier/status/1481085532663087105

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[NeuroticFish]

I do not know how long bitpay activity will continue if the number of transactions continues like this.

I am surprised by these numbers, I was expecting BitPay do better. But I don't mind either, considering their KYC problems and the fact that they had also a history of pushing BCH (iirc).
On the other hand, I don't think that they are "slowly dying", since they've stroke some deals last year, like this one with Wix and this one with Verifone. I would have been expecting though that these would start getting in effect/be visible on those charts, but on the other hand big companies are not so much in a hurry to implement new things.

[OmegaStarScream]

It is slowly dying and the reason behind that in my opinion is:

- BIP71. A couple of years back, they implemented this protocol which made it difficult for some users to pay for their invoices unless used a third party website to get the bitcoin address and amount (from URL)

- KYC. It wasn't obligatory until recently. At first, you could pay just fine unless you're paying a large amount (I believe it was 3000$) but now, you can no longer do that. If you head to the ledger's site and try to buy a device with BitPay, you will have to make an account and go through KYC.

- Banned countries. Some of them are not even on the OFAC list.

So yeah, it does make sense. If we take the stats you posted (from the tweet) they have lost 15K per month just because Namecheap switched to BTCPayServer. I can only imagine how the above impacted them.

[dkbit98]

chart above say that majority of people paying via bitpay using altcoins

What's interesting about this chart is how they posted transactions from other wallets.
I don't know how exactly they know that Ledger wallet or any other wallet from that chart is used in specific transactions, but it's nice to see ledger on the very bottom with AtomicWallet.

Bitpay can only blame themselves for getting this low statistics, after they made some seriously bad decisions, they added mandatory verifications and they focused more on their debit cards.
Now they have to suffer or change their business model to survive, and best thing would be to create some real competition for BTCpayServer that rules this Payment Processor market now, all that without any third-party and they are open source.

[OmegaStarScream]

What's interesting about this chart is how they posted transactions from other wallets.
I don't know how exactly they know that Ledger wallet or any other wallet from that chart is used in specific transactions, but it's nice to see ledger on the very bottom with AtomicWallet.
-snip-

The user must select a wallet before being able to choose the cryptocurrency they want to pay with. See here[1].

[1] https://support.bitpay.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005559826-How-do-I-pay-a-BitPay-invoice-

[dkbit98]

The user must select a wallet before being able to choose the cryptocurrency they want to pay with. See here[1].

I think this is one more bad idea and reason why not to use Bitpay, they will identify you with their full with kyc verification, they will know that you used hardware wallet and what address you use on that wallet.
I guess that you could in theory lie not tell the truth and say that you used some other wallet, but I never used Bitpay so I can't confirm if this would work or not.

[AB de Royse777]

- KYC. It wasn't obligatory until recently. At first, you could pay just fine unless you're paying a large amount (I believe it was 3000$) but now, you can no longer do that. If you head to the ledger's site and try to buy a device with BitPay, you will have to make an account and go through KYC.

I did not like them from the start. Too much favor for BCH but since there were not many options so it was something that I was using until they forced this KYC things. I am pretty sure there are many users like me and they are suppose to lose all of them too.

My namecheap needs to be topped up very soon (in few months I guess). I am wondering how would I deal with this now.

[mk4]

- KYC. It wasn't obligatory until recently. At first, you could pay just fine unless you're paying a large amount (I believe it was 3000$) but now, you can no longer do that. If you head to the ledger's site and try to buy a device with BitPay, you will have to make an account and go through KYC.

Wait what? You need to do separate KYC on BitPay's end now? I understand that it's likely because of authorities forcing them to demand KYC(or just to make sure that the authorities wouldn't pursue them), but this is beyond bad; even just UX wise.

[OmegaStarScream]

My namecheap needs to be topped up very soon (in few months I guess). I am wondering how would I deal with this now.

Namecheap added BTCPayServer not a long time ago (I thought they took BitPay off but apparently not):



The only downside here is that you can only use BTC to pay unlike when using BitPay.

Wait what? You need to do separate KYC on BitPay's end now? I understand that it's likely because of authorities forcing them to demand KYC(or just to make sure that the authorities wouldn't pursue them), but this is beyond bad; even just UX wise.

Is it really the case though? I mean you've got Coinbase Commerce, CoinGate, CoinPayments, etc. and none of these ask their users to go through KYC in order to pay for an invoice.

[hugeblack]

Payment processors like BitPay is preferred by governments as they have all the data and they keep collecting more information so such services will not die because of the information they collect but users will find better options.

I also think that if services such as Visa or PayPal add an option to pay in bitcoin directly without verifying identity or creating an account, then we will not need services like Bitpay and we will rely on open source applications for those who do not want to pay to a third party.

KYC for all users has made them lose some popularity and might make sense if they were as powerful as Binance.

[ABCbits]

On the other hand, I don't think that they are "slowly dying", since they've stroke some deals last year, like this one with Wix and this one with Verifone. I would have been expecting though that these would start getting in effect/be visible on those charts, but on the other hand big companies are not so much in a hurry to implement new things.

But it also can be perceived that BitPay losing their market share on payment processor/gateway, so they decide to focus on enterprise business solution.

I guess that you could in theory lie not tell the truth and say that you used some other wallet, but I never used Bitpay so I can't confirm if this would work or not.

Few days ago i was testing whether BitPay will ask for KYC if someone wish to donate $2K to Mozilla. I tried it few times, where each time i choose different open-source/non-custodial wallet. From my short experience, the KYC request was never triggered and i always see Bitcoin address/amount. So it should be possible to lie what kind of wallet do you use.

[DaveF]

On the other hand, I don't think that they are "slowly dying", since they've stroke some deals last year, like this one with Wix and this one with Verifone. I would have been expecting though that these would start getting in effect/be visible on those charts, but on the other hand big companies are not so much in a hurry to implement new things.

But it also can be perceived that BitPay losing their market share on payment processor/gateway, so they decide to focus on enterprise business solution.

We don't know those are included / will be included in the charts.
For marketing reasons I can see them putting them in. For contractual reasons, I can see a company like Verifone wanting that hidden a bit so they can use the numbers the wat they want.

What's interesting about this chart is how they posted transactions from other wallets.
I don't know how exactly they know that Ledger wallet or any other wallet from that chart is used in specific transactions, but it's nice to see ledger on the very bottom with AtomicWallet.
-snip-

The user must select a wallet before being able to choose the cryptocurrency they want to pay with. See here[1].

[1] https://support.bitpay.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005559826-How-do-I-pay-a-BitPay-invoice-

There is also always the 'other' option. It's more of a they just open the wallet and pass through the data in the way the wallet wants.
I think it's pointless and a bit intrusive but I guess their marketing people don't.

Without knowing what the other processors are doing, it's kind of tough to get a clear reading. Have they grabbed some of BitPays business or they all down?

-Dave

[OmegaStarScream]

Few days ago i was testing whether BitPay will ask for KYC if someone wish to donate $2K to Mozilla. I tried it few times, where each time i choose different open-source/non-custodial wallet. From my short experience, the KYC request was never triggered and i always see Bitcoin address/amount. So it should be possible to lie what kind of wallet do you use.

My bad. Apparently, it depends on the merchant although I don't understand why would Ledger ask their users to verify their identity? Especially when they're offering the option to pay using Crypto.com (but only for certain countries) which doesn't require any KYC.

[dkbit98]

Few days ago i was testing whether BitPay will ask for KYC if someone wish to donate $2K to Mozilla. I tried it few times, where each time i choose different open-source/non-custodial wallet. From my short experience, the KYC request was never triggered and i always see Bitcoin address/amount. So it should be possible to lie what kind of wallet do you use.

I don't like being asked so many questions and being forced to write any information about my wallet when I am paying for something using internet.
As far as I know, Coinbase Commerce have similar service like Bitpay but they don't ask a single information from customer and process is super fast.
It's good to know that we can bypass Bitpay questions and mess around with their stats 

My bad. Apparently, it depends on the merchant although I don't understand why would Ledger ask their users to verify their identity? Especially when they're offering the option to pay using Crypto.com (but only for certain countries) which doesn't require any KYC.

Probably nothing 
Ledger just loves to collect customer information from everywhere, and then they just wait for sudden and unexpected hacks and leaks to happen.
It could be that some of their many sponsors are demanding this information from them... just my speculation.

[ABCbits]

But it also can be perceived that BitPay losing their market share on payment processor/gateway, so they decide to focus on enterprise business solution.

We don't know those are included / will be included in the charts.
For marketing reasons I can see them putting them in. For contractual reasons, I can see a company like Verifone wanting that hidden a bit so they can use the numbers the wat they want.

IMO it's likely transaction which comes from enterprise company isn't included since it could be detected on the chart. For example, industry "VPN/Hosting" (on stat "Prepaid/Gift Cards and Internet industries accept the most cryptocurrency") spiked after there's news BitPay cooperate with very popular VPS service.

It's good to know that we can bypass Bitpay questions and mess around with their stats 

But i expect most user choose wallet they actually use since it's more likely they'll think about inconvenience if they choose wrong wallet rather than privacy concern, so the stats is still fairly accurate.

[LTU_btc]

I'm surprised about it, but I can't say that I'm disappointed to read about it. Though, this chart don't show significant drop, things is pretty much stable. Actually, there is more transactions made in December than in August or September. It would be interesting to see chart for longer period.
And I'm getting impression that BitPay is still first pick for moost merchants unfortunately. Maybe it's not very surprising, considering that BitPay have big budget for marketing, comparing with relatively small decentralised BTCPayServer.

[DaveF]

I'm surprised about it, but I can't say that I'm disappointed to read about it. Though, this chart don't show significant drop, things is pretty much stable. Actually, there is more transactions made in December than in August or September. It would be interesting to see chart for longer period.
And I'm getting impression that BitPay is still first pick for moost merchants unfortunately. Maybe it's not very surprising, considering that BitPay have big budget for marketing, comparing with relatively small decentralised BTCPayServer.

I went on a mini rant here about some things: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5380215.msg58988849#msg58988849

But I really don't think it's because of BitPays advertising. It's because it allows merchants to take BTC and a few of the larger alts if they want and convert it into fiat in a quick and simple way. At the moment just about every business person is stressed to the max and they don't want to play around with exchanging BTC to fiat or anything else. They want to get paid and move on to the next thing they have to do. Yeah, BTCPay is great but if you don't have the time to convert to fiat and it's Friday and your staff wants to get paid and so on do you really want to deal with that.

I actually see that with a merchant I use (namesilo.com). They take BTC direct and BitPay for BTC and some alts. The BTC rate was better for me as the customer if I use the BitPay option then direct. I am guessing that the BitPay fee was less then corporate figured the cost of doing it themselves was.

-Dave

[The Cryptovator]

A long time ago I had used Bitpay to make payments to some sites. They weren't user-friendly from the beginning what I can realize now. And the transaction fee was quite high. Due to their complicity someday we may see people just leaving them and moving some other wallet. For example, before I had to make payment to Namecheap through Bitpay only that had forced me to use that. But lately, I have seen Namecheap accepting payment through BTCPayserver which is easier and reliable. Also could make payment from any wallet, not mandatory to use only a single wallet like Bitpay. So here we avoid Bitpay since I can use my non-custodial wallet like Electrum to make payment. So yes, seems Bitpay is dying day by day.

[LoyceV]

- BIP71.
- KYC.

This indeed reminds me of all the annoyances they gave me. Bitpay is literally the only site I've ever seen that refuses to show me a Bitcoin address to pay to. Their justification is that it's easier. Lol?

There's are two more reasons I disliked them long before KYC:
- they charged a consolidation fee that's much higher than my own on-chain fee, it could easily add 25% to a small payment.
- they accepted zero-confirmation payments, but didn't tell me the fee that requires. Especially when making a time-sensitive order, it means either overpaying or getting the "your fee is too low"-warning, even though the fee is high enough to confirm in the next block.

KYC was really the last straw.

[franky1]

if you add up all bitcoin transactions

(image gets updated automatically by API)

at time of posting this is ~1500 a block (*2016block a fortnight*2)=6.048m transactions a month.
6million tx's a month for everything bitcoin related. exchanges, private trades. mixing, whatever, arbitraging

seems bitpay is at 1% of the whole market of transactions,
with dozens of payment gateways, many dozens of exchanges. many many hundreds of thousands of individuals moving funds privately/personally between themselves. 1% is considered a worthy number.

its not 30%-60% but then again decentralisation doesnt want a service handling 30-60% of transactions