BitPay to Start Supporting Ethereum

Major crypto payments processor, BitPay said it plans to start supporting payments in ether in the coming weeks.

Also, wallet users will be able to store and use ether in a BitPay wallet and BitPay Prepaid Visa Card holders can top up debit cards, the company added. Now it supports bitcoin and bitcoin cash, only. The company also offers stablecoin settlement.

“As one of the largest crypto currencies by market cap and one used by thousands of companies, Ethereum is the next logical choice,” Stephen Pair, CEO of BitPay, was quoted as saying in a press release.

Meanwhile, Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of the Ethereum platform, said that “this truly opens up a new world of possibilities for the Ethereum ecosystem, and together we can continue to be a leading innovator for real world use cases for cryptocurrencies.”

This past weekend, at the Ethereal conference in Tel Aviv, Buterin reportedly said that “ether can be money if the Ethereum community wants it to be.”

Among BitPay’s existing merchants are Microsoft, Newegg, Dish Networks, FanDuel and Avnet.

In 2018, the company processed over a USD 1 billion in payments, or the same as in 2017. Meanwhile, BitPay’s B2B business grew almost 255% from the previous year as “law firms, data center providers, and IT vendors signed up to accept Bitcoin,” the company said in January this year without providing other numbers.

Recently the company said that it has decided to exit Germany due to regulatory reasons.

At pixel time (15:07 UTC), ether trades at c. USD 191 and is up by 1.6% in the past 24 hours and by 5% in the past week.
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Read more: Now That Bitcoin ‘is Digital Gold,’ Which Crypto is For Payments?