ATLANTA — BitPay, Inc., the world leader in bitcoin payment processing, has taken their first outside investment by closing a seed round totaling $510,000. Investors include Shakil Khan, Barry Silbert, Jimmy Furland, Roger Ver, and other angel investors known for seeking out innovative technology companies. One Investor, Roger Ver, paid his investment contribution using bitcoin.

"Bitcoin is an enabling technology, it is a global peer-to-peer payment network that will solve these problems and change the world. When businesses look at our service, they see the benefits are very compelling."

— Tony Gallippi

Over the past year, BitPay has seen transaction volume accelerating with average quarter-to-quarter growth of 50% over the past four quarters. The total dollar value of all orders processed by BitPay in 2012 is over $3 million, and all orders were paid using bitcoin. Bitcoin is the innovative digital currency that is being adopted worldwide.

BitPay plans to use the funds to open their Technology Center in Atlanta, move their headquarters to Atlanta, and hire additional employees. The broad base of financial technology companies already in Atlanta will allow BitPay to hire and retain top talent.

"Identity theft affects 10 million victims per year, and payment fraud totals over $100 billion per year," states Anthony Gallippi, the co-founder and CEO of BitPay. "Bitcoin is an enabling technology, it is a global peer-to-peer payment network that will solve these problems and change the world. When businesses look at our service, they see the benefits are very compelling."

Gallippi and his partner Stephen Pair began working on BitPay in 2011. In a little over one year, BitPay has quietly developed a suite of software tools that allow businesses to collect payments over the bitcoin peer-to-peer payment network. Using BitPay, a business can accept a payment from any country on earth, instantly, while eliminating fraud chargebacks. This capability that BitPay offers is not possible with any payment processor today, including PayPal, American Express, Mastercard, or Visa.

In November of 2012, WordPress.com began accepting bitcoin payments using BitPay's Bitcoin Payment Gateway API, and since then, the activity at BitPay has spiked. BitPay has increased new merchants by nearly 50% to over 2,000 since the WordPress announcement.

In addition to the payment gateway API, BitPay offers simple "buy now" buttons and payment plugins for the most common eCommerce shopping carts such as Magento, WordPress eCommerce, Woocommerce, OpenCart, and Virtuemart. BitPay invoices now have multiple language support including Danish, Finnish, German, Greek, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish.

This week, BitPay will be at CES showcasing Bitcoin and their services in booth #70312.

About BitPay

BitPay is a Payment Service Provider (PSP) specializing in eCommerce, B2B, and enterprise solutions for virtual currencies. As the world leader in bitcoin payment processing, BitPay offers easy tools to accept bitcoin payments online or in person, with the option to receive the funds as a bank direct deposit.