The Atlanta-based Bitcoin payment service provider BitPay announced Tuesday that they will offer a new free plan – basic payment processing free-of-charge, forever, regardless of number of transactions made.
Merchants can use any plugin, API, or app from BitPay’s library, wrote BitPay co-founder Tony Gallippi in their blog post announcement. Merchants will also have access to BitPay’s “industry-leading support,” providing quick response times and personal service.
So if you were a merchant debating whether or not you should accept Bitcoin, or whether you could afford to accept Bitcoin, BitPay’s announcement should serve as a encouraging sign that there isn’t much to lose, especially considering you can convert your bitcoins into dollars almost immediately.
The announcement is part of BitPay’s plan to increase its merchant base. “We have set a goal to enroll one million merchants by the end of 2016,” said Gallippi.
“Our mission at BitPay hasn’t changed since 2011: to make bitcoin every merchant’s favorite form of payment. We want merchants to not only use our service — we want them to love our service. We want them to be as excited about bitcoin as we are and to encourage more of their customers to pay this way. After experiencing such a simple, low-cost, and low-risk payment option, we’re confident they won’t look back.”
BitPay currently serves over 30,000 businesses and charities spanning over 160 countries, and can be added as a payment option to a merchant’s website “in a few minutes, without any programmable code.”
Upgrades are also available, where a merchant can pay a flat-fee and receive Professional, Business, and Enterprise level service packages.
One particular merchant who benefited from this free processing plan was the owner of cardcandy.com, posting on Reddit, “I’m excited to accept Bitcoin and I want to give thanks to Bitpay for making the process extremely easy. I had everything set up and ready to go within five minutes. The free payment processing news from today is what finally encouraged me to take the leap and accept Bitcoin. I feel that this is great news for small businesses like mine and I hope they reach their 1 million merchant goal by 2016.”
Update: In an apparent competitive move to counter BitPay’s new no-fee option, Coinbase, one of the largest Bitcoin exchanges and payment processors (and BitPay competitor), announced that “all registered 501(c) organizations are now eligible to receive free bitcoin payment processing using Coinbase.” This announcement was made alongside the announcement that the Wikimedia Foundation has decided to accept Bitcoin donations and use Coinbase as their payment processor.
