By Raising $30M, BitPay Staffs Up In San Francisco With Visa, PayPal Alums

Why Go For BitPay?

The current hype on BitPay is that they rise a whopping $ 30 million Series A round of capital with BitPay staffing up its San Francisco contingent with a few hires worth noting. With 40,000 merchants signed onto its service, BitPay helps companies of all stripes accept payment for their goods and services in Bitcoin. The top brass consists of formerly of Jumio, Sonny Singh handles payment verification picking up the chief commercial officer title whereas Steve Pratt formerly of Visa, became the company’s director of business development along with Gregg Zigler formerly of PayPal becoming a senior developer.

Intending to have 1 million merchants, the company uses its platform with the massive objective given that the company is implicitly hoping to grow the merchant base by 25X in less than a year and a half. As an interesting company, BitPay provides a wallet –agnostic Bitcoin payment processing – transaction tipping, and in case you are curious, it is taken care of them by the paying party, not BitPay itself. The company as such offers stronger margins than traditional payment providers accepting dollars and so forth where BitPay’s pitch to merchants is therefore simple: using BitPay for free, accepting Bitcoin-based sales that might expand the total transaction volume, as well as saving a few points on the sales that are shifted from traditional currencies to Bitcoin as Bitcoin transactions are free. 

It has been a slow period for Bitcoin apart from the implosion of Mt. Gox, where the price of Bitcoin correlated to the public interest in the stuff that has been somewhat flat, where according to BitPay executive chairman Tony Gallippi the stability is seen as a plus by merchants though most merchants are clear their Bitcoin from sales directly into the cryptocurrency of choice. No longer gyrating like an inebriated yo-yo making it seem like more stable stuff investing time into supporting is no longer the Bitcoin.

When talking about it, the act is similar to taking a shovel, BitPay is not a gold planning approach deriving revenue from the Bitcoin economy as the company charges a premium processing with a monthly basis though its free tier is also robust. Expecting to cross the 50,000 merchant mark BitPay sees quick growth whereas not brisk enough to reach its 1 million merchant goal suspecting to reach that mark larger than Bitcoin market needed to expand. In this case, there is only so much momentum inside Bitcoin itself as it is seen the transaction volume stagnate and flat lines. The rapid growth of Bitcoin will provide a natural lift for BitPay.

Currently, as BitPay has all the cash it needs to quickly staff, as well as sufficient reserve cash to handle far greater payment volume, the company has ultimately stated that it had processed $ 100million in payments as the company wraps up with around15, 500 onboard merchants. It’s fair to assume that the company processes a small multiple of the figure given that metric that’s sizable. 

As of now the bear case in all of this is that the Bitcoin prices perhaps sag, as interest declines, as well as instead of becoming a new form of money, Bitcoin slowly devolves into obscurity. Among others, BitPay doesn’t expect that to happen.

The Reason Behind Asia’s Richest Man Investing In BitPay

The Bitcoin ecosystem may have found its biggest individual backer yet in Li Ka-Shing after some serious drubbing in two of the world’s largest countries. Now an investor in Atlanta- based BitPay Li along with the startup has ambitions to become the PayPal for the virtual currency world making this investment through his well-known venture capital company called the Horizons Ventures, which is an early investor in companies such as Facebook, Waze, Skype, and Summly.  

According to a spokeswoman the Horizons Ventures, as well as the Founders Fund, are among a group of investors including Shakil Khan, Barry Silbert, Jimmy Furland, Roger Ver, and Ben Davenport putting around $ 2.7 million in the startup so far. Where the Founders Fund is the VC group run by people who founded and were early employees at PayPal BitPay has raised $ 2 million from the Founders Fund.  

The Final Thoughts On BitPay

According to the South China Morning Post, it was reported that Li invested in BitPay through Horizons Ventures without giving any specific details on the amount invested. Coming at a time when regulators in India and the People’s Bank Of China, issuing advisories against the virtual currency, Li’s investment in BitPay has even questioned the legitimacy of Bitcoin.