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BitPay, Toshiba Partnership Brings Bitcoin to 6,000 New Merchants

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Bitcoin merchant payment processor BitPay has announced a new partnership with electronics manufacturer Toshiba that will integrate bitcoin payments into Toshiba’s touch-screen point-of-sale platform, VisualTouch.BitPay will provide technical assistance for the purpose of integrating bitcoin payments into the existing VisualTouch system. VisualTouch is used by more than 6,000 client-companies in the hospitality, restaurant, grocery and retail sectors worldwide.The partnership is being formally announced at the 2014 National Restaurant Association Show, an annual conference held by the US-based food services trade group. The event begins on 17th May.Tony Gallippi, BitPay’s executive chairman, said in a statement that the partnership is a way to let more merchants experience the benefits of digital currency.Gallippi said:“This partnership greatly expands the number of businesses that will now be able to accept bitcoin. BitPay is extremely excited about the relationship and the opportunity to expand the Toshiba VisualTouch solution to include bitcoin.”Partnership pushes merchant acceptanceThe partnership highlights BitPay’s effort to expose more consumers and merchants to digital currency payments.Earlier this week, the company announced a new testing platform for payments software developers, affording programmers a place to test new ideas.The news follows BitPay’s Series A funding round. The company raised $30m from an investor pool led by Index Ventures, but that also included Yahoo founder Jerry Yang’s AME Cloud Ventures and PayPal founder Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund.Merchant feel positive about bitcoinWhile it remains to be seen how VisualTouch integration will affect merchant acceptance of digital currencies, there are signs that small businesses that do accept the payment method are seeing positive results.Our CoinDesk merchant survey showed that a larger number of merchants who began taking bitcoin as form of payment have seen a 10 percent boost in sales.Additionally, a number of survey participants indicated that they chose to add bitcoin payments as a means to reduce costs, tap into consumer interest or simply support the bitcoin ecosystem as a whole.Merchant in traditional kitchen via ShutterstockBitPaymerchantsPoint-of-saleToshiba
Original author: Stan Higgins