BitPay Enables 27 Million Ingenico Retailers to Accept Bitcoin

Leading Bitcoin payment processor BitPay has announced their Ingenico Terminal Plugin, allowing enabling thousands of more merchants to accept Bitcoin payments through its point of sale app. In addition, the company explained the growth of Bitcoin throughout 2015 in words anybody can understand. 

Also read: Bitsquare: The ‘Missing Link’ for Decentralized Bitcoin Exchange

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27 Million More Merchants Can Now Accept Bitcoin

Before Bitcoin can be labelled as a mainstream currency, the focus will have to shift more towards the physical payments industry. E-Commerce and M-Commerce are emerging trends, but a lot of consumers still pay in-store for goods and services. Paying with Bitcoin at a physical location is only possible at select locations.

But BitPay has come up with a new plugin to make Bitcoin payments more mainstream for in-store purchases as well. Any of the 27 million retailers in the world with a Telium-based Ingenico payment terminal can start accepting Bitcoin payments through a separate application, although some older models may have to be upgraded to support this option.

The only requirement for merchants to start accepting Bitcoin payments is the creation of a BitPay account. Setting up such an account is a matter of mere minutes, and once created, the information can be paired to the Ingenico payment terminal immediately. All it takes is scanning the generated QR code to link device and account, and hitting the “Approve” button to get things started.

What Made Bitcoin Tick Throughout 2015

Making a digital currency successful hinges – for the most part – on community participation. If there is no one interested in using Bitcoin, the ecosystem will not grow, and eventually collapse. 2015 has been a reassuring one in that regard for Bitcoin, as the digital currency has seen its fair share of success along the way.

BitPay noted a 50% volume increase at the end of 2015. Looking at the numbers over the course of 12 months in 2015, the volume increased by as much as 110%. More people are effectively spending Bitcoin for purchases, rather than looking at the digital currency as an investment vehicle.

To some people, this growth may still look insignificant compared to traditional payment solutions. At the same time, consumer spending in the Bitcoin world been growing year over year, despite the digital currency being around for just seven years. Traditional solutions, such as credit cards, have been around for decades, and only recently started gaining mainstream adoption.

Contrary to popular belief, the number of people spending Bitcoin is not directly related to the Bitcoin price. 2015 has been relatively stable for the Bitcoin price, yet consumer spending has seen its ups and downs over the course of twelve months. Latin America, in particular, has seen a healthy increase in transaction growth, as numbers increased by 1747% compared to 2014.

The success of Bitcoin extends far beyond normal transactions for shopping purposes. BitPay released an application for B2B Bitcoin billing via email, and the importance of this tool became clear throughout 2015. Most of the billing occurs in electronic format already, although accepting credit card payments is not a preferable form of payment due to high fraud rates. Bitcoin offers a solution in that regard, and companies such as NexusGuard are taking advantage of the tool offered by BitPay.

What are your predictions for Bitcoin growth in 2016? Will the actions by BitPay pay dividends? Let us know in the comments below!

Source: BitPay Blog

Images courtesy of Ingenico, Shutterstock, usa.visa.com

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