Need to access your Bitcoin Cash? We've just released an improvement to our wallet recovery tools to allow BitPay and Copay wallet users to withdraw funds to wallets that support BCH.

The Bitcoin network recently experienced a hard fork which created a new kind of digital currency token: Bitcoin Cash (BCH). Because this currency developed from a split in the main Bitcoin blockchain, users holding BTC in software wallets at the time of the fork would have gained an equal amount of BCH corresponding to the same private keys.

BitPay does not support Bitcoin Cash payments, and we have no plans to upgrade our software to support the Bitcoin Cash fork. However, we do want our wallet users to have the option to retrieve their Bitcoin Cash if they wish to do so.

If you had bitcoin in the BitPay or Copay wallets before the August 1st hard fork and you have not claimed them using another wallet, you can now access your Bitcoin Cash tokens (BCH). We're going to show you how to use our BitPay and Copay recovery tool to do this.

Getting Started with the Recovery Tool

Because you are only trying to recover your BCH balance, for your security it's better that you don’t have any BTC balance in the wallet you are trying to sweep. Move your BTC balance to a new, fresh BitPay bitcoin wallet (you MUST BACK UP your wallet recovery phrase).

The next steps below will help you retrieve your BCH from the backup of the original bitcoin wallet using a client-side process. BitPay never obtains access to your private key, which never leaves your device:

Go to the recovery tool in your browser. Select your wallet configuration. The network should be “bch/livenet” Enter your backup phrase(s) (and password if you set one) Click on “Scan Wallet” The wallet's addresses will be derived and scanned in the BCH network. You will now be able to see your BCH balance. If you want to transfer your BCH coins to a BCH address, enter the BCH address to which you want to transfer your coins ( for example, an exchange that receives BCH) and click on "Transfer."

That's it. We've tried to make this process as simple as possible. If you have any issues to report with this software, please share your feedback with our wallet team.

IMPORTANT: At no time does BitPay gain access to your funds or your private keys for either BCH or BTC. This tool is open source software. For more information, please visit bitpay.com/terms.

UPDATE, 10/24/2018: Since March 28, 2018, BitPay has been processing Bitcoin Cash payments