Online e-commerce company Shopify added Coinbase, thus allowing merchants to select between bitcoin processing services.
E-commerce platform Shopify cooperated with bitcoin wallet company Coinbase that will allow its merchants to add bitcoin processing services on their websites.
In November, Shopify has already integrated bitcoin payments via BitPay processor. The news means that now merchants can choose between two main bitcoin processors, Coinbase and BitPay.
In an interview to CoinDesk, payments director at Shopify, Louis Kearns, noted that new feature will allow traders to select processing characteristics that will satisfy their requirements.
Kearns said: “We’ve found that by supporting multiple payment providers it encourages each of them to innovate a bit more and their customers benefit as a result. We see this as a positive play for Shopify and bitcoin at large.”
Shopify also included information about Coinbase and BitPay accounts to its internal resources section. The activation data was also provided.
Although new feature will raise value of its service for customers, Coinbase took the lead on the initiative by creating a Shopify integration tool. Upon the completion, Shopify could simply approve the new feature before adding it.
Kearns told CoinDesk: “We host an open-source payments integration platform that allows payment providers like Coinbase to submit their own integrations to get up and running on Shopify, so Coinbase took the initiative there and built that integration.”
Merchants can use Shopify to test both Coinbase and BitPay before making the final choose.
“We wanted to facilitate a choice for merchants to select whatever bitcoin provider they wanted to work with, or try each of them and decide which one they wanted to use,” he said.
Kearns said that even after BitPay integration last year, customers asked to include Coinbase.
Kearns also stated the new offering will increase the number of Shopify merchants and expand bitcoin usage: “Each company has a certain segment that they are the dominant leaders in. Coinbase is a bit more US-focused, you need US bank accounts to go from bitcoin to fiat, while BitPay is more international.”
According to the updated resources section at Shopify website, two bitcoin processing firms provide different prices. BitPay charges 1% fee for standart transactions, while for monthly subscribers the firm charges 0% fee. In comparison, Coinbase charges 0% fees on processing first $1 million.
Although Kearns did not provided many details, he said bitcoin use on Shoppify is likely to rise in the future. Moreover, he added the firm has already processed “millions of dollars worth of payments”.
The growth was also due to the use of Shopify by major bitcoin companies and enthusiasts. For instance, hip-hop star 50 Cent uses Shopify to accept virtual currency payments for clothing. Several mining shops are also utilizing the platform.
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