Stripe Launches Bitcoin Payments after a Year of Intense Beta Testing

Stripe merchants with a US dollar account can now offer bitcoin as a payment option to customers. The company announced the new feature after completing the beta testing phase, which started in May 2014.

A Stripe representative said, “While in beta, Stripe merchants accepted bitcoin transactions from more than 60 countries so we’re excited to see what’s next.”

Merchants interested in accepting bitcoin can use the company’s latest API or embed the payment method in the checkout process. Fees for the new service is 0.5 percent per transaction. For payments in fiat currencies, individuals will incur a 2.9 percent fee, plus 30 cents for every transaction.

Stripe’s service fees are not the lowest in the industry. However, it does offer a simple, robust payment platform that merchants can integrate without deep coding knowledge. The company also boasts fully customizable toolkits and APIs for developers.

Fred Wilson, Coinbase investor, mentioned, “It’s things like this, making it drop dead simple for merchants to accept bitcoin, that will help drive adoption of Bitcoin payments in the coming years.”

Experts say the move to accept the virtual currency correlates with the company’s plans to expand internationally. In addition to bitcoin, Stripe also recently added support for Apple Pay and Alipay.

“With Stripe’s user base, they have an opportunity to profit and even maintain a strong position, perhaps even as leaders. They are deeply ingrained in the traditional payment processing world, and innovated. [. . .] And what great timing, right after Morgan Spurlock had a phenomenal CNN episode which arguably was the best explanation of bitcoin and its potential to the layman,” highlighted Nathan Wosnack of Blockchain Factory.

Stripe also finished a round of Series C-1 funding includes the following top-level investors: Thrive Capital, Sequoia Capital, Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, and General Catalyst.