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Atlanta, Georgia-based bitcoin is taking a huge step forward in making it easy for merchants to sign up with their payment processing service.
Today, the company has announced a new pricing plan, or we should probably say the lack thereof. BitPay’s going partially free.
Basic payment processing will cost merchants nothing, no matter how many transactions they handle. And this isn’t a one-time/limited-time promotion. BitPay says it’s the model they’re going with from now on.
By doing so, BitPay is effectively obliterating the barrier to entry for new merchants. They currently offer merchants the ability to subscribe to Professional, Business, and Enterprise levels by paying a flat-rate fee every month.
The idea, the company Executive Chairman Tony Gallippi says, is to bring plenty of new merchants aboard.
“We have set a goal to enroll one million merchants by the end of 2016,” Gallippi remarked. “When we started BitPay in 2011, we saw an opportunity to finally give merchants around the world relief from interchange fees. By offering a basic plan that is free and unlimited, forever, we give merchants yet another reason to be excited about bitcoin.”
The free plan will also provide merchants with unlimited access to the BitPay API, plugins, or apps from the BitPay library. For those who require additional services and support options, the Business and Enterprise plans will remain.
“It’s a freemium model,” Gallippi reiterated to NEWSBTC. “The basic BitPay payment processing plan is free. We offer premium services and can add more in the future. We think this has the potential to change interchange fees by giving merchants around the world relief from these high fees.”
By comparison, one of BitPay’s biggest competitors here in the United States, Coinbase, offers a no-fee processing service for the first $1 million in bitcoin revenue. After that, a one percent fee is charged upon conversion from bitcoin to local currency.
Overall, a very interesting development today, we think.
BitPay has seemingly been at the forefront of bitcoin adoption in the industry, which many would agree is a fantastic thing. Now we wait and see how many new merchants take advantage of their offering.
What do you think of BitPay’s new model?
Guestmium 
Brian Crain 
I think they should clarify the “mium” in freemium.
Ok, so the price the customer pays is slightly marked up (price of their bitcoin slightly devalued) so that the fees are covered. A bit dishonest to call it ‘free’, but oh well.
BitPay simply realized that with high competition, marginal cost of processing payments of basically zero and great ease of switching payment processors, prices were going to zero in the medium term anyway. Freemium model with paid support makes total sense. Of course, the other question is if in the long run this can turn into a highly profitable business. I’m not so sure. Doesn’t seem you could build a PayPal-sized business this way, but perhaps that’s just not something that will happen at all in an open system like Bitcoin…