In the first quarter this year, US-based major crypto payments company BitPay processed 10% more volume in USD, compared to the last three months of 2019, while the number of transactions remained unchanged.
It includes all cryptoassets the company supports, with bitcoin (BTC) representing the largest part, BitPay’s Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Bill Zielke told Cryptonews.com without specifying. Key verticals driving this increase were financial services, currency exchange, computer software and engineering, and IT services. These saw increases by 11%-40%, Zielke said, adding that the company plans to launch its stats page later this summer.
Also, despite the turbulence in the financial markets in addition to the fluctuating price of BTC, the number of processed transactions through BitPay remained unchanged, Zielke said, without providing numbers. According to him, during the Coronavirus pandemic-caused isolation and house quarantines, with people being required to stay home, they continue to shop through ecommerce and online channels. GiftCards “have also seen large spike as people have been buying a lot more gift cards from the BitPay app or gift card sites like eGifter.com,” Zielke said.
BTC price in 4Q19 and 1Q20:
As for new trends, BitPay have seen an increase in spending in the UK and Europe in specific business niches, including domain hosting companies like Namecheap, video game providers like Microsoft Xbox, and delivery services like Takeaways.com, all of which have seen their volumes steadily increase, according to the CMO.
Last week, the company said it onboarded Beliani, a Europe-based web-only international seller of furniture and home accessories, that had over 1 million customers across 16 countries in Europe.
Besides BTC, BitPay supports etherum (ETH), bitcoin cash (BCH), XRP, as well as four dollar-pegged stablecoins, USD coin (USDC), gemini dollar (GUSD), paxos standard token (PAX), and binance USD (BUSD).
BitPay processed USD 1 billion in transactions in 2018, or second year in a row.
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Learn more:
BitPay to Enable Merchant Payments From All Bitcoin Wallets
BitPay vs BTCPay: Which Bitcoin Payment Processor is Right for Your Business?
