Many merchants are still wary about accepting bitcoins, but new vendor partnerships and a maturation of the companies that handle bitcoin exchanges address some of the virtual currency's riskier aspects. Bitcoin is a decentralized cryptocurrency, offering users cash-like traits online...
Crypto Street, a startup that’s building a platform for trading digital currencies like Bitcoin, is making a point of forging relationships with multiple banks after similar businesses suddenly lost their bank accounts and folded or scaled back. “You can never tell what’s going to hap...
Through a partnership with Bitcoin payment processor BitPay Inc., Gyft now accepts bitcoins for its mobile gift card product. This extends the virtual currency's reach to more than 50,000 retail locations. "The biggest issue with Bitcoin to date is: Where do you spend these bitcoins?"...
People — and payment companies — are starting to take Bitcoin seriously. The decentralized virtual currency is overcoming its stigma as a fringe currency for illegal transactions and is stirring up consumer scrutiny of the practices of large payment providers. The payments industry is...
Possibly viewing Bitfloor, a popular Bitcoin exchange, as a risky money transmitting business, Capital One Financial Corp. has closed the exchange's bank account, prompting Bitfloor to halt operations. The incident may portend a growing wariness of businesses that handle virtual curre...
Bitcoin payment processor BitPay Inc. today announced its global processing volume for the month of March will exceed $2 million, a milestone for the company. BitPay is also reducing its fees. The company will now process Bitcoin transactions and support settlement into 11 local curre...
The fragile Bitcoin economy will change drastically as companies scramble to obtain the proper licensing in response to guidance from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), which categorizes administrators and exchangers of virtual currencies as money services businesses. ...
BIPS has an advantage here because it supports 42 different currencies for converting out of bitcoin at 2.5%, whereas BitPay supports 11 different currencies at 2% fee, and Coinbase offers cash-out only in U.S. dollars at 1% with strict limits. Additionally, the cost of conversion has...
BitPay, which processes payments for merchants in the decentralized digital currency Bitcoin, said Monday it recently secured capital from a group of investors that includes Ben Davenport, a software engineer at Facebook; A-Grade Investments, a venture-capital firm that includes Ashto...
Coinlab Inc., a Bitcoin services company, is partnering with the largest Bitcoin exchange in the world to facilitate Bitcoin transactions in the U.S. and Canada. The deal could promote Bitcoin use, but Coinlab's existing relationship with Silicon Valley Bank could compromise the crypt...
I've always had this nagging feeling about Coinbase’s exchange service and I just couldn't quite put my finger on it. The San Francisco startup receives praise for its simple method of acquiring and selling bitcoins, a digital currency, via one’s U.S. bank account. In fact, Coinbase, ...
The anonymous digital currency Bitcoin, which is already accepted on the Wordpress blogging site, has another mainstream partner. Reddit, the social news and entertainment site, now accepts bitcoins as payment for Reddit Gold, a subscription service. Created in 2009, Bitcoin is a dece...
A group of angel investors including SecondMarket founder Barry Silbert has invested $510,000 in BitPay, a firm that processes payments for merchants in the digital currency Bitcoin. BitPay says it plans to use the new capital to move its headquarters to Atlanta from Orlando and to hi...
Chris Larsen, who disrupted consumer finance in the 1990s and 2000s with E-Loan and Prosper, is seeking to shake up the industry again with Ripple, a peer-to-peer payment and lending system. Ripple looks to improve on Bitcoin, the decentralized virtual currency and payment system that...
Bitcoin and Beyond: Digital Money in 2012 It's been a rocky year for digital currencies. Facebook began phasing out its Facebook Credits while Bitcoin continues to suffer a bad reputation. However, there are some promising developments on the horizon, with experienced payments provide...
Twitter's immense popularity has caught the attention of many established payment companies and entrepreneurs. Several have attempted to turn the microblogging service into a payment channel, but so far there are few success stories.
Chris Larsen, who disrupted consumer finance in the 1990s and 2000s with E-Loan and Prosper, is seeking to shake up the industry again with Ripple, a peer-to-peer payment and lending system. Ripple looks to improve on Bitcoin, the decentralized virtual currency and payment system that...
Bitcoin-Central, a French digital currency exchange that handles the largely unregulated Bitcoin currency, now operates under French regulation after parent-company Paymium partnered with payment services provider Aqoba. Bitcoin was created as a digital alternative to cash. It has man...
There is no single definition of a mobile wallet. Each product differs vastly in its choice of technology, audience and the basic type of payment upon which it was built but most fit into a few simple categories.
The first considerable change for the Bitcoin market nears the date when rewards for 'mining' the digital currency drop from 50 to 25 bitcoins per block generated.
