A new Visa debit card is made available to all BitPay clients throughout the 50 U.S. states, as revealed by the bitcoin automated payment processing system at the Consensus 2016 New York conference.
BitPay was primarily created with the intention to make it easy for businesses to accept payments made in bitcoins, and has become the today’s largest bitcoin payment processor serving over 60,000 merchants on 6 continents. NewEgg, Valve, and Microsoft are some of the big names that utilize the service to extend their site’s payment options towards customer convenience.
The industry leader makes use of technological advancements and applies their skills further on a different market, with the launch of the BitPay Visa which can be availed by all their clients in the U.S.
Spend Bitcoin Anywhere
More and more people are embracing bitcoin in the growing digital world, but its use in everyday life tends to be limited with favorite stores and restaurants that aren’t ready to accept the cryptocurrency just yet. BitPay has now made it possible for consumers in the U.S.
James Walpole, BitPay’s marketing lead, tell how they think the card is a useful tool for bitcoin holders to actually use it in cases when they can’t use the currency itself, by quickly moving between bitcoins and USD.
Despite being widely described as a Bitcoin Visa debit card, the balance is in fact exclusively held in dollar amounts. Users will typically send bitcoin to BitPay, who then will quickly converts the cryptocurrency into dollars. Thus, anyone that owns bitcoin can now have a debit card to use their bitcoins as dollars.
BitPay Senior Engineer and project lead Corey Glaze says the Visa Card gives users of the digital currency one of the fastest and easiest ways to acquire liquidity for their bitcoin savings.
BitPay Visa can be loaded and reloaded using any bitcoin wallet, a transaction that’s done in merely a few seconds, then spend the dollar equivalent anytime you wish and anywhere you may be.
Issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank and Visa partner, the Bitpay Card allows you to make purchases online or at brick and mortar merchants worldwide who accept payments via Visa POS systems. This includes millions of vendors who offer PayPal as an option. Not only does the BitPay Visa card grant the freedom to shop anywhere, but it lets you withdraw cash at any ATM right when you need it with up to $3,000 limit per day.
The BitPay Card User Experience
The simplicity and flexibility of topping up is a big plus. There are absolutely no fees on bitcoin top-ups with a max load of up to $10,000 spendable funds per day. Those interested to supplement top-ups can opt to have it reloaded by means of direct deposits from their employer, where the company will send funds directly to the BitPay Visa automatically on each pay period. Bitcoin deposits are credited to the dollar balance in almost an instant, so there’ll be neither waiting nor worrying about the fund transfer to clear prior to cashing out.
BitPay CEO Stephen Pair stated that the company believes that using bitcoin in more ways makes it more valuable. In terms of the fees associated with the card, he expressed how they intentionally wanted loading bitcoin to be free of charge. The fee is linked to particular actions, such as to start the card and for accessing the ATM.
The debit card can be ordered for $9.95 and as you would expect, is payable only by bitcoin. It is bound to arrive at your doorstep in 7-10 business days, then followed through by card activation by calling the 1-800 number on a sticker that’s seen in front of the card. Cardholders can then easily manage their card balance and information via the user accounts page of BitPay Visa, which can be done through their mobile device as well.
The BitPay cardholder site is built for ease of use on both desktop and mobile devices. Monitoring transactions, balance history, current dollar load amount, and adding funds from the bitcoin wallet app can be done even when on-the-go, providing a seamless user experience to all who have the Bitcoin Visa debit card on the palm of their hand.
I did 2 back to back bitpay top ups to the bitpay debit card of $50. The first went through perfectly. The second was short .09 cents and it was still sent and confirmed on blockchain and no where can I find the missing funds and on my main account page of bitpay its like it never happened.
can those of us in Africa especially Nigeria use Bitbay ATM card. How will it operate.