BTC.com, a platform for cryptocurrency users, miners and developers, today announced the BTC.com wallet will integrate Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 70 (BIP-70) for processing bitcoin payments between customers and merchants.
BIP-70 provides a streamlined protocol for secure end-to-end communication between customers and merchants anywhere in the world. The protocol defines a template for safely routing and confirming payment requests, receipts, and refunds over bitcoin’s blockchain. BTC.com allows users to safely store their private keys on its state of the art HD multi-signature web and mobile wallets, ensuring users maintain full control over their cryptocurrencies.
With this update, BTC.com opens the doors for its users to buy products from BitPay’s hundreds of thousands of merchants who only accept BIP-70 compliant wallets. BTC.com’s wallet has more than a million users and has processed more than $5B worth of bitcoin (BTC) and bitcoin cash (BCH) since 2015.
“We’re always striving for new methods and partnerships to expand the use of BTC and BCH as a currency and integrating with BitPay is an important step towards transacting with retailers and merchants. Cryptocurrencies can begin to compete with credit card and mobile transactions by capitalizing on current inefficiencies in traditional payment processing services and extend the boundaries of commerce. Enabling customers, merchants and the Bitcoin community to utilize Bitcoin in commerce will sow the seeds for cultivating deep and sustainable growth from the whole bitcoin community.”
BTC.com is joining a bitcoin merchant economy that is already driving wider adoption of cryptocurrency as a viable form of payment. With credit and debit card networks charging merchants between two and three percent per transaction, bitcoin payments are a financially competitive alternative, especially in the international purchase and sale of online goods and services. BitPay transactions charges merchants a one percent fee.
“We appreciate BTC.com’s support for BIP-70 as BitPay works to make Bitcoin commerce payments easier and even more secure. With BIP-70, we have seen a drop from an 8%+ payment error rate (in dollars) to a 0.27% error rate. It’s this ability to ensure correct payments using BIP-70 helps the entire industry to grow.”
“Destinia (an online travel agency for hotels, flights, and vacations) has been a pioneer in adopting bitcoin as payment method in 2014, when it was still just a blip on the general public’s consciousness. BItPay has supported us since the start to make it easy for our customers to utilize Bitcoin as a form of payment, which our customers have resonated to. Our bitcoin bookings have grown year-on-year; in 2017, bitcoin bookings increased 121% over 2016, accounting for the equivalent of more than €1 million. The average ticket price purchased using bitcoin (€675) is double that of tickets purchased using credit card (€326). This shows us that we are attracting higher value customers, as well as tapping into the passionate bitcoin community eager to utilize bitcoin as a form of payment.”
With BIP-70, BTC.com’s wallet will now be able to participate in networks that only accept payment protocol wallets. Atlanta-based payment service processor BitPay, leads the way in hosting bitcoin merchants, enabling of users to spend and accept payments in bitcoin. BitPay offers a suite of features and support for merchants utilizing their services, amongst which is a processing and settlement feature that mitigates price volatility by directly depositing funds into users’ bank accounts.
