The bitcoin service enters into competition with PayPal enabling their users to send euro transfers to email addresses.

Bitwala, a service that supports bitcoin payments for utility bills in 19 European countries has introduced a new feature. Bitwala users can now send euros to any email address using their bitcoin balance.

“We think that Bitwala’s EmailPay tool is great for getting people into Bitcoin, show them how easy it is to handle them and also increasing speed of transaction if you want to send someone money,” states the company’s website.

The service charges 0.5% of the transfer amount or a minimum of €1 per transaction. The recipient should have a bank account to collect the payment.

Bitwala services are available in 19 European countries: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain.

All users should verify their identity to pay utility bills or to send money via email. However, the company offers different levels of verification depending on the monthly transaction volume. For transfers under €500 a verified email address, name and billing address are required. Users who want to transfer up to €2,000 per month should also provide their passport details. Finally, for transferring up to €50,000 users should go through web identification.

The company promises to process transfers under €1,000 within a few hours during office hours. Bitwala uses Spectrocoin bitcoin payment processor services.

Nadya Krasnushkina