BitPay announces record year for revenue with $1B+ in transactions again

Largest global blockchain payments provider BitPay announced in a press release it sent to CoinReport that in 2018, it processed over a $1 billion again in payments and set a new record for transaction fee revenue.

Some of the new customers of BitPay include the State of Ohio, HackerOne and Dish Networks.

The B2B business of the firm also saw a record year, growing almost 255% from the previous year as numerous IT vendors, data center providers and law firms signed up to accept bitcoin.

BitPay also hired former Western Union and PayPal executive Rolf Haag as head of industry solutions responsible for the B2B business.

BitPay co-founder and CEO Stephen Pair said in the news release we received, “BitPay’s B2B business continues to grow rapidly as our solution is cheaper and quicker than a bank wire from most regions of the world.”

He added, “To process over a $1 Billion for a second year in a row despite Bitcoin’s large price drop shows that Bitcoin is being used to solve real pain points around the world.”

In 2018, BitPay also set a record for reducing payment error rates. The dollar volume lost to digital currency payment errors fell significantly from more than 8% in December 2017 to well below 1% of BitPay’s total dollar volume processed.

BitPay head of product Sean Rolland stated, “The adoption of support for Payment Protocol wallets has made a big difference for our merchants. Merchants are now able to easily accept Bitcoin payments in a simple easy way without any support issues. This was our biggest request by our enterprise merchants.”

Although the payment processor also added settlement support for Bitcoin Cash and stable coins from Paxos, Gemini and Circle, it remains laser focused on bitcoin.

Rolland added, “Bitcoin has the network effect around the world and we are still extremely bullish on Bitcoin and the Bitcoin ecosystem.”

All wallets utilizing BitPay’s Bitcore Wallet Service, like BitPay wallet and the Copay wallet, sent billions of dollars in value in bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash in 2018. Using BitPay and Copay, users have created more than 1.5 million wallets to date. In 2018, the BitPay wallet added integrations with big gift card brands, allowing for users to purchase gift cards in-app for travel, food and shopping with bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash.

In 2018, BitPay grew headcount by 78%, bringing the number of their employees close to 80. New employees were hired across the board in compliance, engineering and sales.

The payments provider also raised $40 million in Series B funding, bringing its total raised capital to more than $70 million. New investors in the company include Capital Nine, Nimble Ventures (an affiliate of Passport Capital), Menlo Ventures, Delta-v Capital, G Squared as well as individual investments from Internet Security Systems (ISS) founder Christopher Klauss Family Office and Tencent co-founder Alvin Liu. The initial Series B round was led by Aquiline Capital Partners, but it was extended due to increased investor demand.

Image – Via the press page of BitPay’s website