By
Chimamanda U. Martha
April 25th, 2024
Bitcoin Cash price rise together with growing interest towards this altcoin from the side of crypto enthusiasts make BitPay change its decision and add BCH support.
As it has been announced, cryptocurrency payment service provider BitPay has added Bitcoin Cash (BCH) support, which will open an opportunity for brick-and-mortar businesses to use Bitcoin Cash for payments. Bitcoin payments are already available for BitPay users and now its customers will have a chance to choose between conducting payments in BTC or BCH.
Since 2014, BitPay Checkout can be used by shops, restaurants and other retail businesses, as a service being already available in Toronto, Atalnata St. Petersburg, Madeira Beach and Paris. Crypto payments are gaining popularity, that’s why BitPay has taken a decision to provide more options for its customers.
Thanks to this new move, BitPay customers, who want to pay in cryptocurrency, will no longer be forced to convert their BCH to BTC coins before paying for their purchases, as now they will be able to pay directly in BCH. It is necessary to scan BitPay Checkout QR code from a screen of a mobile phone or tablet to conduct payment successfully. After this is done, a retailer can receive local currency bank settlement within one day.
As it is written in the official BitPay blog post, in addition to Bitcoin Cash support, in their new version of the app users will enjoy not only enhanced design and performance but also some changes and updates to Payment Protocol, which will help avoid errors in payments and minimize the impact of cryptocurrencies’ price volatility for merchants. The blog post reads that “merchants get every dollar or euro they charge, minus BitPay’s 1% processing fee”.
For 7 years BitPay has been supporting only Bitcoin payments. The decision to add another cryptocurrency to their platform was taken by BitPay given a skyrocketing growth of BCH price that has led to significantly increased interest in this altcoin.
Last week, Bitcoin Cash price exceeded a mark of $1,000, while further rise brought this altcoin to the $1,529.62 levels, according to CoinMarketCap. This coin managed to add 10% within 24 hours, now being the fourth-largest cryptocurrency with market cap of over $26 billion. In fact, this means that BCH has grown more than twice within one week only.
At the same time, Bitcoin price is also growing, though the growth rates are not so high. According to CoinMarketCap, having added 4% within 24 hours, Bitcoin price makes $9,282.80.
In this context, BCH is accused of boosting its price artificially. One of the largest mining groups – Antpool – is said to regularly burn some percentage of the coins received as an award for solving the mathematical algorithms that create a backbone of the network. It is said that reduction of BCH supply leads to growth of its value. Nevertheless, some experts doubt that burning can really make a digital currency more valuable.