BitPay, Edge Team to Promote Crypto ‘Payment Quality’

Crypto wallet Edge has implemented BitPay’s protocol, allowing its customers to spend cryptocurrency online and in stores “free of payment exceptions,” according to a Tuesday (June 7) press release.

Launched in 2017, BitPay Protocol eliminates payment exceptions — including overpayments, underpayments, late payments and potential double-spends — to ensure accurate payments, the release stated.

“With Edge’s support, together we are able to promote payment quality online and in-store for both customers and merchants wanting to leverage the benefits of crypto payments,” BitPay CEO Stephen Pair said in the release.

By adopting the BitPay Protocol, Edge and wallets like it get access to Verifone’s 600,000 merchants, according to the release. BitPay said it is the only payment processor that works with more than 100 different wallets to facilitate consumer-to-business (C2B) and business-to-business (B2B) payments.

Edge, a non-custodial wallet, supports more than 1.7 million accounts in 10 languages and 179 countries, letting customers buy, sell, trade and spend more than 130 digital assets.

Last month, PYMNTS spoke with Pair about the rise in cryptocurrency ownership following a survey by PYMNTS and BitPay that found a 16% growth in people who owned crypto.

Read more: More Consumers Buying Crypto and Want More Ways to Spend It

“I think it’s organic growth,” Pair said. “You know people that are getting exposure to it, telling their friends [and] family about it. And you’re just seeing more and more people ready to experiment and try something new. It’s a tremendous amount of growth.”

But Pair added that few people purchase crypto just to use it to purchase something else.

“What we’re trying to do is make it easy for people that have crypto to buy things,” Pair said. “It’s largely people that have experimented — made a small investment that has grown, and now they’re ready to buy something.”