The leading Bitcoin and crypto payment merchant service provider said; it would add support for XRP on its Bitpay wallet application.
However, rumours have been circulating across Reddit and Twitter blockchain communities on Jan 20. Noting that Bitpay had already added support for XRP.
The payment company officially announced its partnership with Ripple’s development platform Xpring.
Bitpay merchants across the world will now have the ability to accept ripple’s native coin, XRP without implementing additional integrations. The Chief Marketing Officer at Bitpay, Bill Zielke stated:
“With the addition of XRP, BitPay continues to expand consumers’ ability to transact in the currency of their choice and give merchants new exposure to a large base of loyal XRP users intent on driving real-world adoption.”
Bill Zielke said that an eCommerce site, eGifter would be the first merchant to accept XRP payment. However, its technical implementation was still pending. The move is a way forward to push the adoption of ripple service by institutions and seems a logical step for both organizations. In fact, Ripple has partnered with multiple banking institutions in a bid to promote its cross border payment transfers through banks.
Meanwhile, eGifter will allow buyers to purchase gift cards that can be used across hundreds of leading retailers. Note that the eCommerce site is among the early adopters of crypto and bitcoins in the retail sector. The platform has been allowing users to purchase gift cards via cryptocurrency since 2014. While commenting on the integration of XRP, eGifter CEO Tyler Roye said:
We’re excited to add XRP as a payment option on the eGifter platform, and we welcome XRP early adopters in the same way we did those of Bitcoin in 2014.”
Almost a year ago, eGifter announced to accept both Litecoin and Dash payments. Following this integration, the platform revealed it had witnessed a growing amount of sales.