Over the past two decades, online commerce has become one of the main ways of doing business. Virtual payments are made simply and quickly by filling out simple forms and making a few mouse clicks. Funds are almost immediately transferred from bank cards and are received on the accounts of companies, then the goods and services are delivered to the customers by mail or in person. However, along with all the apparent perfection of such transactions, they are still under control of banking institutions, which implies a number of limitations.
Fortunately, progress does not stand still and traditional currencies have been replaced by a cryptocurrency – a virtual form of currency that uses blockchain technology and has decentralized nature. In other words, digital coins are a confidential financial system that allows making remittances without information leakage. Thus, an alternative to the use of credit cards and bank accounts to pay for goods and services today is the use of cryptocurrency, and Bitcoin is the most famous version of it.
Accepting payments in Bitcoin has a wide range of advantages for both online stores and offline sales.
Certainly, the decentralized nature of Bitcoin means that everyone can start accepting payments using this innovative system without requiring an account from a third-party provider. But it’s easier, cheaper and safer for many enterprises to pay a small amount to a professional payment processor.
One of the most popular services provided by these payment processors is the instant conversion of Bitcoin (BTC) into the required currency (for example, USD). This possibility is very important, since most businesses that accept Bitcoin payments still have to pay all their own expenses or, for example, buy shares using common financial resources (currencies), and the changes of exchange rate between Bitcoin and local currency may lead to losses.
In addition, payment processors provide you with all the tools you need to accept payments in Bitcoin as easy and convenient way as possible, without need to develop your own software solution.
In this article, I am going to tell about some popular payment processors of Bitcoin. The following payment processors have been selected based on the range of proposed functions, the cost of their use (lower than the cost of credit card payment processors), as well as their reputation for reliability and fair business practices.
First of all, ask yourself a question: what is the main reason that you would like to accept payments in Bitcoin? The most popular answers are the following:
- To reduce the business costs associated with accepting payments on credit cards.
- To attract attention and customer loyalty from the created community of Bitcoin enthusiasts.
- To attract the attention of the media.
- Because I believe that the world needs Bitcoin.
- My clients asked me.
So, let’s get down to a brief description of some payment processors.
BitPay
Bitpay offers one, if not the most complete solution for the sellers who want to integrate the Bitcoin processing into their existing operations.
The company offers a wide range of “plugins” for existing programs for the purchases, including Magenta, OpenCart, Zen Cart, X-Cart, WordPress (Woocommerce, E-Commerce, etc.), Drupal Ubercart and others. Therefore, if you already have a store that works with any of them, the integration of payments into Bitcoin is very simple. If you are just starting business, then cooperation, for example, with Shopify will allow you to create a new store that accepts Bitcoin payments.
Merchants using BitPay can instantly convert all or part of their revenue from sales to another type of currency, including USD, EUR, GBP, CAD, and others. Payments are received daily on your bank account. You are charged a monthly fee for the use of BitPay services, but there is no additional commission for the transaction, therefore, for example, you receive 1 US dollar paid to your bank account, for every $ 1 paid by your customers.
Cryptopay
Cryptopay is, first of all, a European service for buying and selling Bitcoin for euro or GBP, but the company also offers a good solution for the merchants.
The difference of Cryptopay is that the system includes a sales application by reading a QR code.
In addition, the websites that accept donations have the option of integrating the “pay now” button, that is very easy to use.
GoCoin
GoCoin offers traders the opportunity to accept payment in Bitcoin or Litecoin.
This allows to integrate easily into existing sites, using different choice of plugins for popular software products for such stores as Magenta, PrestaShop, OpenCart, WooCommerce and many others. In addition to it, there is an API for the developers who want to build their own solutions.
It should be noted that at the moment the market of the companies accepting payments is quite large and it keeps on growing. Thus, anyone can choose the proposal that suits his activity best.
