BitPay sees record year for revenue in 2018

2018 was another record year for BitPay as it processed over $1 billion in payments and achieved a new company record for transaction fee revenue despite turbulence in the cryptocurrency markets, the company announced today. It also signed up new influential clients, Dish Network, HackerOne, and the State of Ohio, while its B2B business grew almost 255 per cent. 

“BitPay’s B2B business continues to grow rapidly as our solution is cheaper and quicker than a bank wire from most regions of the world,” said Stephen Pair, co-founder and CEO of BitPay. “To process over $1 billion for a second year in a row despite Bitcoin’s large price drop shows that Bitcoin is being used to solve real pain points around the world.”

The company also managed to drop their payment error rate to under 1 per cent of BitPay's total dollar volume processed. According to Sean Rolland, head of product at BitPay, thanks to the adoption of support for Payment Protocol wallets, “Merchants are now able to easily accept Bitcoin payments in a simple easy way without any support issues.” Issues with payment errors led video game distribution platform, Steam, to drop BitPay in 2017.   

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Sonny Singh, BitPay's chief commercial officer, confirmed that payment processor will add at least one more digital asset in 2019, with merchant demand as the primary decision making factor. The company currently supports Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and regulated stablecoins, Paxos USD, Circle USD, and Gemini USD, although the stablecoin assets have yet to see any significant volume. 

Singh also noted that BitPay does not seen open source alternatives like BTCPayServer as competitors: rather, they encourage their growth and emphasis on self-sovereignty. That being said, Singh says he expects large merchants like Microsoft to continue using BitPay's service as their compliance restrictions mean they cannot yet hold digital assets on their balance sheets. At present 90% of merchants opt to convert incoming cryptocurrencies directly to fiat. 

Speaking of compliance, Singh noted that BitPay's decision to cut Gab, the social media platform associated with extremist groups, was ultimately influenced by compliance and the company's terms of service. 

As for 2019, Singh expects the business to ramp up efforts on their B2B product, build up relationships with the banking industry, and continue to increase its presence across global markets, with particular emphasis in Asia, where merchants often struggle with capital control restrictions and exorbitant cross-border transfer fees.