“We collaborated on a project with Bitmain a few years ago, bu | Bitcoin paper

“We collaborated on a project with Bitmain a few years ago, but there is no relationship with the company today. We would like to have them sell their miners through us, though.”

Is BitPay gearing up to become PayPal 2.0?
Support for more cryptocurrencies and a possible integration with the Lightning Network may have some thinking that BitPay is positioning itself to become the next PayPal for cryptocurrencies.

While this may be, the company has — like PayPal — been criticized for restricting payments in a few instances. A $100,000 donation to an Amazon rainforest charity was reportedly blocked by BitPay last August. The reason being was that charity organization, known as Amazon Watch, failed to meet BitPay’s internal standards.

Last September, the Hong Kong Free Press also complained that BitPay was holding donor funds for weeks.

Pair explained that the Hong Kong Free Press didn’t have their bank account set up correctly and that there were additional steps needed to be taken before transactions could be made. He said:

“We have a tiered system at BitPay that starts with minimal documentation and then more documentation along the way. Often times things like this happen because companies haven't gone through verifications or gotten approved for higher tiers.”

Pair also mentioned that BitPay takes regulations very seriously and that the company is fully compliant with U.S. regulations.

According to Pair, being compliant in the U.S. is a main reason merchants choose to use BitPay over other service providers. “Some competitors haven’t thought through the full payment experience from a merchants perspective,” he said. Pair also attributes good customer support and e-commerce tool integrations as reasons for BitPay’s success.

Although BitPay may have all the elements required to become the next PayPal, increased user adoption of cryptocurrencies is the next step. In the meantime, Pair noted that BitPay’s goal is to reach the point where people naturally expect to have the option to pay with cryptocurrencies wherever they go. He said:

“Once you achieve that level of ambiguity, you will be able to spend cryptocurrency easily. The missing link now is embedding it, which is not something that will happen overnight. Rather, this will happen like the evolution of the internet — I think we’ll see a similar story around blockchain payments.”