Bitcoin merchant payment processor BitPay has announced a new partnership with electronics manufacturer Toshiba that will integrate bitcoin payments into Toshiba’s touch-screen point-of-sale platform, VisualTouch.

BitPay will provide technical assistance for the purpose of integrating bitcoin payments into the existing VisualTouch system. VisualTouch is used by more than 6,000 client-companies in the hospitality, restaurant, grocery and retail sectors worldwide.

The partnership is being formally announced at the 2014 National Restaurant Association Show, an annual conference held by the US-based food services trade group, which begins on 17th May.

Tony Gallippi, BitPay’s executive chairman, said that the partnership is a way to let more merchants experience the benefits of digital currency:

“This partnership greatly expands the number of businesses that will now be able to accept bitcoin. BitPay is extremely excited about the relationship and the opportunity to expand the Toshiba VisualTouch solution to include bitcoin.”

Company efforts

The partnership highlights BitPay’s effort to expose more consumers and merchants to digital currency payments.

Earlier this week, the company announced a new testing platform for payments software developers, affording programmers a sandbox environment in which to to quickly and safely test new ideas.

The news also follows BitPay’s Series A funding round in which it raised $30m from an investor pool led by Index Ventures, but that also included Yahoo founder Jerry Yang’s AME Cloud Ventures and PayPal founder Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund.

Positive about bitcoin

While it remains to be seen how VisualTouch integration will affect merchant acceptance of digital currencies, there are signs that small businesses that do accept the payment method are seeing positive results.

Our CoinDesk merchant survey showed that a larger number of merchants who began taking bitcoin as form of payment have seen a 10% boost in sales.

Additionally, a number of survey participants indicated that they chose to add bitcoin payments as a means to reduce costs, tap into consumer interest or simply support the bitcoin ecosystem as a whole.

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

Merchant in traditional kitchen via Shutterstock