BitPay was founded in 2011 to provide mobile checkout services to companies that wanted to accept bitcoins. By October 2012, BitPay had grown to having 1,100 active merchants, including being WordPress's bitcoin merchant. BitPay announced in January 2013 that they would be relocating their
headquarters to
Atlanta, Georgia, from their previous location,
Orlando, Florida. In May 2013, BitPay announced that they had raised $2 million via
Founders Fund. In September 2013, the company announced it had reached the milestone of 10,000 merchants. Gallippi stated that since the foundation of the company, they had processed over $34m, which was equivalent to 270,830 bitcoins at the time on the Bitcoin Price Index. In 2014, BitPay expanded its North American presence beyond its headquarters in Atlanta, opening offices in
New York City,
San Francisco and St. Petersburg, Florida. BitPay's European headquarters opened in Amsterdam and their South American Headquarters were opened in
Argentina. In January at
CES 2014, BitPay announced that 12,000 merchants had signed up to their service.
The D Las Vegas and
Golden Gate Hotel and Casino both announced that BitPay would be used as their chosen merchant for bitcoin in
Las Vegas. They were two of the first casinos in
Las Vegas to accept bitcoin. Shortly after CES 2014, the
NBA basketball team the
Sacramento Kings announced they would become the first major sports franchise in
North America to accept bitcoin as a form of payment for tickets and merchandise and would be processed by BitPay. Within the same month, it was announced that
Zynga would also begin to accept bitcoin, with BitPay as its merchant. In 2014, BitPay merchant
BitGive became the first bitcoin charity to be recognized as a charitable organization by the
IRS and was granted
501(c)(3) status. The 2014 FEC ruling that bitcoin donations can be accepted by political campaigns and organizations led to BitPay partnering with CoinVox and other fundraising organizations. In June, BitPay became the first bitcoin company to sponsor a North American sports event. They sponsored the
St. Petersburg Bowl, a college bowl game. Following the announcement, over 100 companies in the
St. Petersburg area took steps so that they could accept the digital currency before the first event. In September 2015, the company sued its insurance provider in regards to non-coverage of a 5000 BTC theft that occurred in December 2014. In May 2016, BitPay launched the BitPay Visa Prepaid Debit Card, the first prepaid Visa debit card available for bitcoin users in all 50 US states. The company also added new bitcoin-accepting firms, including gaming platform Steam. New collaborations and releases with Intel and Microsoft's Azure Cloud platform brought new features and capabilities to BitPay's Copay and Bitcore open source platforms. In 2017, BitPay launched another round B funding campaign. Later that year, they raised the minimum payment on the platform to US $100 from its previous US $5; the change was reversed only a few days later. Additionally, BitPay began supporting
Bitcoin Cash. Bitcoin's prepaid WaveCrest Visa was discontinued in January 2018. BitPay received its virtual currency license from the
New York Department of Financial Services in July 2018. In 2021
AMC Theatres,
Gucci, and
TAG Heuer began allowing customers to make payments via BitPay. == Funding ==