Georgia-based bitcoin payment processor BitPay has announced that it now offers a complete testing platform for developers.

The goal is to allow developers access to the company’s bitcoin payment processing and payroll capabilities in a way that doesn’t require the use of its live system.

This platform will enable developers to better use continuous delivery methodologies for software updates – a popular way to release new features, since most software is now built on the web as a service.

The blog post states:

“One of the key attributes supporting an effective DevOps strategy is the presence of a release process that includes a continuous delivery pipeline.”

BitPay is one of the largest merchant processors for bitcoin, having recently announced $30m in Series A funding from investors including Richard Branson and Index Ventures.

Testnet plus BitPay

Smaller startups working on bitcoin projects use bitcoin testnet – an implementation that allows for use of the bitcoin protocol without requiring actual funds to be spent in the process.

However, larger organizations go through a rigorous software development lifecycle. For example, there is a need for a complete environment in addition to bitcoin testnet when building out enterprise-grade products.

BitPay’s testing platform offers this functionality, and as such, it’s a potential signal that the company expects larger IT organizations to implement bitcoin-related projects within enterprise-level systems.

Faster testing

Another key motivation for BitPay to launch this robust test environment was that developers previously needed to obtain access to bank deposit account and routing information before testing the system’s capabilities.

Now, instead of having to use the company’s production server for testing transactions, developers can trial their software without explicitly accessing bank accounts.

Reconciliation, as a result, can be tested prior to actually depositing or withdrawing real money for smaller organizations.

In addition, this test environment doesn’t go through BitPay’s know your customer (KYC) procedures that exists in the production system, which should allow for faster debugging and iteration during software testing.

Disclaimer: CoinDesk founder Shakil Khan is an investor in BitPay.

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