Global bitcoin processor and merchant payment solutions provider BitPay has partnered with online multiplayer gaming giant Wargaming to enable their massively-multiplayer online (MMO) gaming platform to accept bitcoin.

Wargaming is the leader in MMO gaming and has released 15 popular strategy-based games including World of Tanks, World of Warships, and World of Warplanes over the past few years. All of the company’s games are free to play and the Wargaming platform enables players to customize weapons and vehicles used in the game. With the integration of BitPay, users of the Wargaming platform can top up their in-game currency – virtual gold – using bitcoin to purchase game power-ups and customizations in many games.

Interestingly, Wargaming’s integration of the BitPay processing technology is one of the first implementation of the Payment Protocol standard, which allows Wargaming customers to purchase virtual gold faster, broadcasting their transaction to the Bitcoin network in less time.

The Payment Protocol standard was first introduced in BIP 70, to settle more secure and quicker transaction. According to BitPay, there are three main difference between a Payment Protocol transaction and a standard bitcoin payment.





Address: BitPay automatically sends a payment protocol URL, which users’ wallet sends a Payment Protocol request to and retrieve the amount due. Broadcasting: Payment Protocol broadcasts the transction quicker than a standard bitcoin payment by sending a copy of the transaction directly to the BitPay server, where the BitPy team verifies it and rebroadcast it themselves. Refunds: BIP 70’s Payment Protocol is one of the only mechanisms available today which enables bitcoin payment refunds. Payment Protocol requres wallet platforms to send BitPay a valid refund address which can be used to return funds.

“With bitcoin, Wargaming is taking a new step to reach the growing base of users playing its MMO games in the United States,” explained BitPay Marketing and Communications Officer James Warpole.

“As a native digital top-up method, bitcoin will give Wargaming’s customers an alternative to filling out credit card forms and a simpler, faster way to get the virtual gold they need.”

With Wargaming and OPSkin’s integration of bitcoin, the BitPay team are attempting to disrupt the gaming industry using micropayment-enabled payment technologies like bitcoin. Just two weeks ago, BitPay partnered with OPSkins, a popular gaming platform which enables CounterStrike: Global Offensice (CS:GO) players to purchase in-game skins used to decorate CS:GO weapons using bitcoin.

According to BitPay, OPSkins has seen a substantial increase in the number of bitcoin purchases, paying out nearly US$40,000 to its sellers every day, in bitcoin. The company expects the figures to go further north in near future, an analysis made from the “fast pace of the incoming bitcoin transactions it’s begun to see in the past months”.

In the upcoming months, BitPay also aims to integrate its bitcoin payment processing technologies in leading gaming platforms, to enable gamers to purchase in-game items with ease, using bitcoin micropayments.