merged into this article . discuss proposed since september 2016 . bitpay headquarters atlanta georgia usa united states argentina netherlands no . of locations 6 area served worldwide chairman tony gallippi ceo stephen pair industry payment processor employees 80 1 website official website launched may 2011 bitpay is a global bitcoin payment service provider headquartered in atlanta georgia . 2 it was founded in may 2011 by tony gallippi and stephen pair . bitpay provides payment processing services for merchants and is one of the largest bitcoin payment processors . 3 in 2014 bitpay started processing 1 million usd daily . 4 bitpay has partnered with many large merchants over the past year including microsoft newegg tigerdirect and warner bros. records . 5 6 7 8 bitpay has also partnered with paypal as well as merchant acquirers such as global payments and alternet systems . 9 10 11 bitpay has developed many open source bitcoin projects . citation needed contents 1 history 1.1 2011 2012 1.2 2013 1.3 2014 1.4 2015 2 services 3 open source projects 3.1 bitcore 3.2 insight 3.3 copay 3.4 foxtrot 4 funding 5 sponsorship 6 see also 7 references 8 external links history edit 2011 2012 edit bitpay was first founded in 2011 to provide mobile checkout services to companies that wanted to accept bitcoins . following the foundation of the company co founder gallippi visited a conference in prague in november 2011 to discuss bitcoin . at the time he announced that the company had around 100 merchants actively using their service . within the first year by october 2012 bitpay had grown to having 1 100 active merchants . 12 one of the first major partnerships came in 2012 when bitpay became the official bitcoin merchant for wordpress . 13 the move came to make wordpress more accessible to bloggers in countries that frequently faced blocks for either financial or political reasons . 14 bitcoin at the time had no central authority meaning bitpay couldn t lock entire countries out . 15 16 in september 2012 the company announced that it had reached the milestone of 1 000 merchants using bitpay to accept bitcoin payments . around the same time a breakdown of bitpay s customer base was discussed with around 60 % of their merchants based in the united states . europe and the uk accounted for 25 % with the remaining merchants spread across a total of 98 countries . 17 2013 edit bitpay announced in january 2013 that they would be relocating their headquarters to atlanta georgia from their previous location orlando florida . the move came following the announcement the company had secured 510 000 in seed funding . according to the company s co founder the city of atlanta was chosen due to the number of fintech companies located in georgia . at the time the technology association of georgia tag stated that the state of georgia was home to more than 90 fintech companies . 18 later that year it was announced that the first bitcoin charity would be established the bitgive foundation . the charitable foundation was created by connie gallippi the sister of bitpay s chairman and co founder gallippi . 19 the board of directors included the bitpay cofounder pair . shortly after the launch of bitgive it was announced that bitpay would be the merchants for the charitable organization . 19 gyft who specialise in gift cards partnered with bitpay in 2013 . 20 payments began to be processed initially via gyft s android app . during an interview with tech crunch gallippi announced that bitpay was processing on average 5 million per month in bitcoin transactions for its merchants . 20 in may 2013 bitpay announced that they had raised 2 million via founders fund . the bitcoin processor stated that at the time they were not looking for investment until later in 2013 but couldn t pass up the opportunity to work with founders fund . 21 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 the equivalent to 270 830 bitcoins at the time on the bitcoin price index . 22 bitpay developed a processing module in 2013 for woocommerce which allowed the company to process online orders made with bitcoin . the move allowed orders fulfilled by amazon.com to be placed with bitcoin but meant that amazon and other e commerce sites would receive the amount in their given currency . 23 in late 2013 bitpay was used for the purchase of a tesla motors car the model s in california . 24 until that point car purchases using bitcoin had been rare . the partnership between the lamborghini dealership and bitpay continued when news of the purchase featured in the media . 25 the media coverage led to other potential customers to contact the dealership requesting to pay in bitcoin . 25 2014 edit 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 . 26 27 bitpay s european headquarters opened in amsterdam and their south american headquarters were opened in argentina . 28 29 in january at ces 2014 bitpay announced that 12 000 merchants signed up to their service . 30 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 . 31 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 . the transactions would be processed by bitpay making them the first bitcoin merchant to process sports tickets on such a large scale . 32 the implementation of the virtual currency would start from march 1 when fans and visitors to the sacramento kings games would be able to use bitcoin to make the payment . in this instance fans would pay in bitcoin before bitpay converted the bitcoin amount into dollars for the sacramento kings . 33 the move came after adafruit began accepting bitcoin in november which enabled the sacramento kings to accept the cryptocurrency . 34 limor fried stated at the time one of the biggest obstacles that bitpay helped overcome was letting clients stay out of the currency and exchange process . 35 within the same month it was announced that zynga would also begin to accept bitcoin with bitpay as its merchant . 36 the deal would be for in game purchases for the games farmville 2 castleville chefville coasterville hidden chronicles hidden shadows and cityville which was confirmed by cnet following the initial announcement on reddit . 37 the news of the partnership between bitpay and zynga prompted a sharp rise in the cryptocurrency . this was following the fall in december 2013 after the chinese government took steps to enact a crackdown on the currency . 38 in june 2014 it was announced that the rapper 50 cent would be accepting bitcoin for his new album release animal ambition . according to usa today 39 all the bitcoin purchases for the album would be processed by bitpay . 40 at the time of the album release many independent artists had accepted bitcoin as a form of payment before 50 cent . he was however seen at the time as one of the best known musicians to accept the digital currency as a form of payment . 41 bitpay in august 2014 was the merchant for one of the largest home purchases to be made using the bitcoin currency . the property was located near lake tahoe at a value of 1.6 million or 2 739 bitcoins . 42 around the same time of the transaction for the property on lake tahoe the wall street journal announced an american based company would become one of the first nationally to stop receiving dollars and only accept payments through bitpay . 43 from 2016 onwards euro pacific precious metals would only receive payments in bitcoin with bitpay acting as the merchant for all the transactions . 44 in september bitpay announced that they were partnering with processing giant paypal for bitcoin acceptance in their payment hub . 9 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 . 45 the 2014 fec ruling that bitcoin donations can be accepted by political campaigns and organizations led to bitpay partnering with coinvox 46 and other fundraising organizations . 47 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 . 48 2015 edit in september 2015 the company sued its insurance provider in regards to non coverage of a 5000 btc theft that occurred in december 2014 49 50 services edit bitpay s merchant processing offerings mitigate the risk of bitcoin price volatility by allowing the merchant to accept bitcoin and immediately converting it to us dollars euros or the currency of the merchant s choice . 51 bitpay works across 30 currencies and because it is non reversible it makes it valuable for merchants who are working internationally . in 2013 it was announced that merchants could accept bitcoin and receive fiat currency the next day for a low 0.99 % fee . 52 in july 2014 bitpay announced that it would offer free and unlimited payment processing forever . 51 this announcement resulted in techcrunch declaring that bitcoin is a catalyst for the commoditization of payment processing . 53 merchants have the ability to accept bitcoin with numerous open source plugins and hosted solutions . 54 the service for bitcoin payments fulfilled by amazon was first introduced in 2013 and was seen as a positive move for the bitcoin currency . the module was developed with woocommerce and has meant that web stores using amazon.com for fulfilment could from that point forward accept bitcoin currency . following the integration it was explained that the module worked closely with the fulfilment api and that the process would be completed automatically . when compared to other processors such as paypal many of them have to go through and enter information manually in order to complete the purchase which isn t the case with bitpay . 23 in addition to their ecommerce offerings bitpay also has point of sale integration solutions with softtouch visualtouch and dc pos as well as a web app and android app . 55 the company also provides a payroll api whereby american employees can elect to have all or part of their salary paid in bitcoin . 56 2014 also brought the introduction of get bits an easy to use facebook app designed for bitcoin beginners that searches a user s network to find someone who has bitcoin available . 57 58 open source projects edit bitpay has frequently employed members of staff to work on open source projects to benefit the bitcoin currency . in 2013 one of their new developers who had moved from red hat stated that he had been employed by bitpay to simply work on open source projects to aid the development of bitcoin . 59 bitcore edit bitcore is a complete open source native interface to the bitcoin network and which functions as a building block to developing apps for bitcoin . 60 insight edit insight is an open source bitcoin blockchain api that provides a way