Major Payment Operator Will Bail On All Bitcoin Transactions by Late April
SputnikNews.com
24.01.2018
The news on Stripe, the authoritative pay processor ditching Bitcoin-based transactions seems to raise quite a few questions – both over the failed bitcoin expectations and which digital currencies are actually promising.
Stripe, the company which helps over 100,000 businesses successfully perform online financial transactions, is to round off its nearly four-year support for Bitcoin payments.
The move came amid remarks that incredibly high price volatility that the bitcoin has shown recently hampers transactions, makes them too slow and for a big commission fee. Separately, Stripe said Bitcoin users now saw the virtual currency largely as an “asset” to be bought and sold, rather than something a means of exchange.
“By the time the transaction is confirmed, fluctuations in Bitcoin price mean that it’s for the ‘wrong’ amount,” Stripe’s product manager Tom Karlo said in his blog.
Bitcoin transaction fees had also risen “a great deal” resulting in a decrease in demand from Stripe’s customers to accept Bitcoin payments, he said. He added that an average fee is tens of US dollars, which is nearly as costly as a bank wire.
The Stripe payment processor was the first to lend support for Bitcoin back in 2014 and has been with it all through its rises and falls for the past 4 years.
Now all transactions are due to be stopped by April 23.
However, the future doesn’t look that gloomy for all the rest of cryptocurrencies Stripe is operating with. Karlo went on to say:
“We’re interested in what’s happening with Lightning and other proposals to enable faster payments.”
“OmiseGO is an ambitious and clever proposal; more broadly, Ethereum [blockchain based computing platform] continues to spawn many high-potential projects.”
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