BitPay

Tony Gallippi and Stephen Pair founded BitPay in Atlanta in 2011, at a time when only a few merchants accepted bitcoin. The company builds tools for crypto acceptance and spending, and in the United States it holds a license for virtual currency business activity from the New York State Department of Financial Services.

Payment processing runs through BitPay, Inc. and BitPay B.V., while the self-custody wallet comes from the separate company BitPay Software, LLC. Customers in Europe contract with the Dutch entity for the regulated payment services, while the wallet remains an app in which users hold their own keys.

The Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets authorized BitPay B.V. as a crypto-asset service provider under Article 63 of MiCA, and the interim register of ESMA dates the authorization 16 July 2026. BitPay announced the authorization on 15 July 2026, two weeks after MiCA became fully applicable across the European Union.

The register lists two services: exchange of crypto assets for money and transfers of crypto assets on behalf of clients. BitPay describes the scope as payment processing, cross-border payments and access to partner-supported buying, selling and swapping, and the entry names 30 states of the European Economic Area, the reach of a CASP license passported from the Netherlands.

Merchants add BitPay to online checkouts, send invoices by email or accept crypto assets in physical stores. BitPay locks the exchange rate for the payment window and then pays the merchant in its own currency or in crypto, so the merchant does not carry the price risk of the payment.

BitPay also handles crypto payouts to suppliers, freelancers and customers, and charities use it to accept crypto payments as donations. Merchants connect through an API, through plugins for common shop systems or through payment links that they send to their customers.

BitPay is a crypto payment processor founded in 2011, when it started to let merchants accept bitcoin payments online. Today it processes payments in several crypto assets and stablecoins for online shops, service providers and charities, and it offers a wallet app for private users.

A business connects BitPay through an online checkout, payment links, email invoices or a terminal in a store, and its customers pay from any crypto wallet. The stablecoin payments option settles in tokens pegged to a currency, which keeps the amount stable between checkout and settlement.

The BitPay wallet is a self-custody app for phones and desktops and also comes as a browser extension, in which users keep their own keys and send, receive and swap crypto assets. Users can buy crypto assets in the app through partner services and pay BitPay merchants directly from the wallet.

BitPay sells gift cards for retailers that people pay for with crypto assets, and its merchant directory lists businesses that accept BitPay at checkout. Both routes let holders of crypto assets spend them at shops that do not accept crypto assets directly.

After the MiCA authorization BitPay named stablecoin payments as its immediate focus in Europe, Crypto Briefing reported. Under MiCA a payment in a euro or dollar stablecoin uses an e-money token whose issuer needs its own authorization, while BitPay as the processor handles the exchange and the transfer.