Developer-Friendly Stripe to Test Bitcoin Payments

March 28, 2014 By: Kevin Xu

Stripe, an online payment platform that’s popular with developers is testing support for businesses to get paid in bitcoin.

Launched by Patrick and John Collision, brothers from Limerick, Ireland, their platform has gained serious funding from Silicon Valley and traction, and is now valued at $1.75 billion.

Stripe also counts ride sharing service Lyft, Shopify, and numerous other merchants and service providers among its customers.

Businesses that are interested in taking payments in bitcoin can now sign up for it for Stripe’s beta testing, pending acceptance.

Tarsnap, an online backup service, will be one of the first to test out Stripe’s new bitcoin functionality.

While the platform was tailor-made for merchants to accept online through credit cards at 2.9 percent plus 30 cents per transaction, the cut that Stripe takes for bitcoin payments is still being worked out.

Similar to bitcoin payment processors BitPay and Coinbase, merchants that integrate Stripe’s payment API can take payments in bitcoin with minimal risk. The value in bitcoin paid is almost instantly exchanged for the local currency and transferred to the merchant’s account within a week.

Following a ruling from the IRS that bitcoin is property and not a currency, it will be interesting to see how it affects businesses and bitcoin consumers alike in this burgeoning market.

Stripe’s largest competitors, PayPal, and the PayPal acquired Braintree, have not yet moved to integrate bitcoin payments, but this development could put pressure on them to explore their options in transacting in digital currencies.