BitPay FAQs

Need help paying a BitPay invoice? Check out our video payment guide to learn how to pay to a payment URL.

BitPay invoices only work with wallets that are updated to work with Payment Protocol. Learn more about why BitPay chose Payment Protocol wallets for payments.Top benefits of using Payment Protocol:

Payment Protocol makes sureyou send exactly the right amount ofBitcoin or Bitcoin Cash.

With Payment Protocol youdon'tneed to worry about failed payments, delayed orders, or refunds.

Payment Protocol adds new security to payments, protecting you from sending payments to imposters or attackers.

Payment Protocol makes sure you include a high enough miner fee for the Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash network to confirm your transaction.

Payment Protocol Compatible Wallets

Bitcoin (BTC) Wallets

You can use any of thepopular Payment Protocol-compatible walletsbelow to pay a BitPay bitcoin (BTC) invoice.If you don't have one of these wallets yet, simply create a wallet (please use the current release version) and send some bitcoin to it.

BitPay Wallet

Copay Wallet

BTC.com Wallet

Mycelium Wallet

Edge Wallet (Formerly Airbitz)

Electrum Wallet (Desktop only, PayPro not supported on Mobile)

Bitcoin Core Wallet

Bitcoin.com Wallet

BRD Wallet (breadwallet)

Bitnovo

Blockchain Wallet

Exodus (Desktop only, PayPro not supported on Mobile)

HODL Wallet

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) Wallets

You can use any Payment-Protocol-compatible BCH wallet with a BitPay merchant who accepts BCH.The following wallets are fully compatible. We are currently working to add more fully-compatible wallets.

BitPay Wallet

Copay Wallet

BTC.com Wallet

Edge Wallet (Formerly Airbitz)

Bitcoin.com Wallet

Bitcoin Cash Wallet (Uses old address format, recommend converting to Cashaddr)

Electron Cash Wallet

Cointext

Exodus (Desktop only, PayPro not supported on Mobile)

Badger Wallet

Ethereum (ETH) Wallets

You can use any Web3 wallet or wallet with a Dapp browser to pay a BitPay merchant who accepts ETH. The following wallets are tested and compatible. We are currently working to add more fully-compatible wallets.

BitPay Wallet

Metamask

AlphaWallet

TrustWallet

Opera Browser

Paying with a Hardware Wallet?

Have a Nano Ledger or TREZOR hardware wallet? Check out our guides to paying:

Nano Ledger/TREZOR + Electrum Desktop Payment Guide

Nano Ledger/TREZOR + Mycelium Mobile Payment Guide

If your wallet is not on this list,it may fail to work with BitPay.

What about other popular wallets?

Our goal isn't to limit users' wallet choices. We are working with other wallet providers in the Bitcoin ecosystem to advance adoption of the Bitcoin Payment Protocol. We created and released a simpler JSON interface for Payment Protocol which will make it easier for wallets to adopt these improvements.

Widespread adoption of Payment Protocol will immediately improve the bitcoin payment experience. If your favorite wallet is not on this list, contact them and ask them to accept Payment Protocol for their wallet.

How do I move bitcoin to a Payment Protocol-compatible spending wallet?

Watch our video tutorial here on how to move funds from an exchange to a bitcoin wallet for spending.

The BitPay wallet is available on the following platforms:

Android

iOS

Windows

Mac

Linux

Note: We no longer support the Windows Phone and Chrome app versions of the BitPay wallet. Microsoft is no longer releasing new updates for Windows Phone, and Google is soon to end support for Chrome apps.

Installing on Mobile

If you are using the BitPay wallet on your mobile device, please download and update the wallet application in the App Store (iOS) or Google Play Store (Android).

Installing on Desktop

If you are using the wallet on a desktop computer, you can get the most recent version of the app on the store for your operating system.

Installing on Windows

To get the app for your Windows desktop, click here.

When the page opens up, click the blue Get button on the right corner.

here

You might be asked to log into your Microsoft account in order to download the app.

After the app is installed, you can find it on the Start menu.

Installing on Linux

1. To get the Linux app click here and click Install.

2.Click View in Desktop store (for Ubuntu 16.04 or later).

3.Click Open-xdg-open

4. Click Install

If you were using an older version of Linux or if the Desktop Store does not open up:

Open the terminal, type sudo snap install bitpay and hit enter.

Type the password and wait for the installation to finish.

When the app has been installed, you will find the BitPay app on the Start menu.

Installing on Mac

To get the Mac app click, then click View in the Mac App Store and click Open link.

When the Mac App Store opens up, click Get and Install App.

After the app has been installed, you can find it on the Launchpad.

Because your encrypted password is not stored by BitPay, there is no way to reset it.

If you need to regain access to your wallet because you have forgotten or lost the encrypt password, you must restore the wallet using the 12 word recovery phrase. If you do not have the recovery phrase, you will not be able to regain access to your wallet.

If you have backed up your encrypted wallet, you can delete the wallet and then restore it using your 12 word recovery phrase. Do not delete your wallet if you do not have your 12 word recovery phrase, as you will not be able to recover the deleted wallet without the 12 word recovery phrase.

To delete the wallet:

Open the BitPay App.

Tap the gear icon in the upper right corner.

Under Keys, select the key that contains the wallet.

Scroll down and, under Advanced, tap Delete.

Tap Delete and confirm.

After the wallet is successfully deleted, you can restore the wallet from your 12 word recovery phrase.

To import the wallet using the 12 word recovery phrase:

Open the BitPay App.

Tap the gear icon in the upper right corner.

Under Keys click Create New Key.

Click Import Wallet.

Enter the 12 word recovery phrase.

Click IMPORT.

We collect information from our merchants in line with our internal policies and procedures. Higher processing volumes require us to collect additional information to verify the identity and nature of the businesses were serving.

If you want to raise your approved processing volume limit, log in to your BitPay dashboard to apply for a higher tier. When you select "Apply," you will be redirected to a page where you can securely upload the information and documents we require.

Below are the requirements for increasing your approved volume limit.

Note: for certain industries BitPay may ask for additional documentation.

[email protected]

If you are a publicly listed company, please contact us at .

Watch our FAQ video "How to Upgrade Your BitPay Approved Processing Volume Tier"

Merchant approved sales volumes are on a rolling 24 hour time frame. This means that when an invoice is fully paid, the paid amount is reduced from your approved sales volume for 24 hours.For example:

Let us say you have an approved sales volume of $100 per day and your client creates and fully pays an invoice for $25 on January 1, 2014 at 12:00 UTC. Your approved sales volume will be reduced by $25 until January 2, 2014 at 12:00 UTC. On January 2, 2014 at 12:01 UTC, your approved sales volume will be reverted back to $100 until another invoice has been fully paid.

What is BitPay ID?

BitPay ID verification for BitPay Dashboard is performed by Onfido. Onfido provides Identity Verification Services. To provide their services to BitPay, Onfido collects certain information from users. For example, when verifying the identity of a user, Onfido asks for an image of the users identity document as well as a picture or video of their face. Onfido then verifies whether the identity document is genuine and whether the photo or video of the users face appears to match the photo on the identity document. If yes to both, the users identity is verified.

How do Onfido and BitPay share my information?

Onfido provides the results of their Identity Verification Services with BitPay. Onfido Reports provide both Document Verification (whether the identity document is likely to be genuine) and Facial Verification (whether the person providing the document is the same person as in the document).

You can review Onfidos Privacy Policy for more information on how Onfido protects and uses your information.

You can review BitPays Privacy Policy for more information about how BitPay collects, stores, uses, and protects your information.

Why do I need to verify with Onfido?

Individuals wishing to make payments over 3000 USD or receive refunds over 1000 USD (or equivalent in other currencies) for BitPay invoices must verify with BitPay ID via Onfido.

Business users who wish to make payments or receive refunds within these thresholds must complete ID verification as individuals.

What documents are accepted?

BitPay users can use a passport as identity verification in over 195 countries. Some countries also have other documents which can be used for identity verification. You can view the accepted documents for Onfido verification at https://onfido.com/us/supported-documents/.

Please be sure to provide the front and back of those documents which require both sides to be provided. The only accepted US visas are immigrant visas. Paper or other temporary IDs are not accepted.

Drivers licenses are accepted for some locations. For users providing a drivers license, the following additional types of driver licenses are allowed:

Instruction Permit

Learner Permit

Conditional License

Commercial License

Intermediate License

Probationary License

Enhanced License

Military License Provisional

License Graduated Drivers License

TVDL Licence

Licenses not for Federal ID

How do I delete my information?

Onfido deletes information automatically once instructed to by their clients, like BitPay. However, Onfido and BitPay also follow all legal obligations to keep information and not destroy it.

If you would like to access a copy of your information, have your information deleted, or otherwise exercise control over how your information is used, please contact BitPay via our support form.

Step 1. Get your wallet ready

Make sure you have one of these Payment Protocol compatible wallets.

Create a wallet. ( How to create a BitPay Wallet )

Send some cryptocurrency to your wallet.

You can also watch our video on how to pay a BitPay invoice below:

Step 2. Pay the BitPay Invoice

There are three ways to pay a BitPay invoice:

Option A. Scan the QR Code

Scan the QR code to open the payment in your mobile wallet. Your wallet will lock in with the correct cryptocurrency address and sending amount. Then, make the payment.

frequently asked questions on Payment Protocol

Option B. Send the Payment Manually

Copy the payment URL beginning with the following from the invoice:

bitcoin:?r=https:// for Bitcoin.

bitcoincash:?r=https:// for Bitcoin Cash.

ethereum:?r=https:// for Ethereum.

Note: The Ethereum payment URL format will only display when scanning the QR code to facilitate easier pasting into dApp browsers.

Next, paste the payment URL into your wallet's Send screen. Confirm your payment details, then send the payment.

Option C. Open the Payment In Your Wallet

If your wallet is on the device you're using to view the invoice, you can open the payment in your wallet by tapping Open in wallet. Confirm everything is correct, and then send the payment from your wallet.

Notes about BitPay invoices:

You'll see the payment reflected on the invoice instantly when you hit "Send" in your wallet.

Remember to send your payment during the 15-minute payment window.

BitPay only guarantees the fixed cryptocurrency price for this time period.

Why does BitPay require payments via Payment Protocol?

Payment Protocol makes sure the cryptocurrency you send is exactly the right amount. It also makes sure you include a high enough fee for the network to confirm your transaction.

No mispayments! With Payment Protocol, youdon'tneed to worry about failed payments, delayed orders, or dealing with refunds.

Payment Protocol also adds new security to payments, protecting you from sending payments to imposters or attackers.

Learn more about why BitPay chose Payment Protocol compatible wallets for payments.

Have more questions?

Check out our .

BitPay can settle in native currencies for bank accounts in dozens of countries. Please see our Banking & Settlement Documentation for more information.

BitPay also provides payment processing and cryptocurrency settlement for merchants in the following 233 countries and territories:

Afghanistan

land Islands

Albania

American Samoa

Andorra

Angola

Anguilla

Antigua And Barbuda

Argentina

Armenia

Aruba

Australia

Austria

Azerbaijan

Bahamas

Bahrain

Barbados

Belarus

Belgium

Belize

Benin

Bermuda

Bhutan

Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Botswana

Bouvet Island

Brazil

British Indian Ocean Territory

Brunei Darussalam

Bulgaria

Burkina Faso

Burundi

Cameroon

Canada

Cape Verde

Cayman Islands

Central African Republic

Chad

Chile

China

Christmas Island

Cocos (Keeling) Islands

Colombia

Comoros

Congo

Congo, the Democratic Republic of the

Cook Islands

Costa Rica

Cte d'Ivoire

Croatia

Curaao

Cyprus

Czech Republic

Denmark

Djibouti

Dominica

Dominican Republic

El Salvador

Equatorial Guinea

Eritrea

Estonia

Ethiopia

Falkland Islands (Malvinas)

Faroe Islands

Fiji

Finland

France

French Guiana

French Polynesia

French Southern Territories

Gabon

Gambia

Georgia

Ghana

Gibraltar

Greece

Greenland

Grenada

Guadeloupe

Guam

Guatemala

Guernsey

Guinea

Guinea-Bissau

Guyana

Haiti

Heard Island and McDonald Islands

Holy See (Vatican City State)

Honduras

Hong Kong

Hungary

Iceland

India

Ireland

Isle of Man

Israel

Italy

Jamaica

Japan

Jersey

Jordan

Kazakhstan

Kenya

Kiribati

Korea, Republic of

Kosovo

Kuwait

Lao People's Democratic Republic

Latvia

Lebanon

Lesotho

Liberia

Libyan Arab Jamahiriya

Liechtenstein

Lithuania

Luxembourg

Macao

Macedonia, The Former Yugoslav Republic Of

Madagascar

Malawi

Malaysia

Maldives

Mali

Malta

Marshall Islands

Martinique

Mauritania

Mauritius

Mayotte

Mexico

Micronesia, Federated States of

Moldova, Republic of

Monaco

Mongolia

Montenegro

Montserrat

Mozambique

Myanmar

Namibia

Nauru

Netherlands

New Caledonia

New Zealand

Nicaragua

Niger

Nigeria

Niue

Norfolk Island

Northern Mariana Islands

Norway

Oman

Pakistan

Palau

Palestinian Territory, Occupied

Panama

Papua New Guinea

Paraguay

Peru

Philippines

Pitcairn

Poland

Portugal

Puerto Rico

Qatar

Runion

Romania

Russian Federation

Rwanda

Saint Barthlemy

Saint Helena

Saint Kitts and Nevis

Saint Lucia

Saint Martin (French Part)

Saint Pierre and Miquelon

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

Samoa

San Marino

Sao Tome and Principe

Saudi Arabia

Senegal

Serbia

Seychelles

Sierra Leone

Singapore

Sint Maarten (Dutch Part)

Slovakia

Slovenia

Solomon Islands

Somalia

South Africa

South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands

South Sudan

Spain

Sri Lanka

Sudan

Suriname

Svalbard and Jan Mayen

Swaziland

Sweden

Switzerland

Taiwan, Province of China

Tajikistan

Tanzania, United Republic of

Thailand

Timor-Leste

Togo

Tokelau

Tonga

Trinidad and Tobago

Tunisia

Turkey

Turkmenistan

Turks and Caicos Islands

Tuvalu

Uganda

Ukraine

United Arab Emirates

United Kingdom

United States

United States Minor Outlying Islands

Uruguay

Uzbekistan

Vanuatu

Venezuela

Virgin Islands, British

Virgin Islands, U.S.

Wallis and Futuna

Western Sahara

Yemen

Zambia

Zimbabwe

For more information about why a country or territory is not on this list, check out Why can't I use BitPay's services in my country?

Since this card is a prepaid debit card, we do not need to perform a check against your credit record.

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The BitPay Visa Prepaid Card is issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank, member FDIC, pursuant to a license from Visa, U.S.A. Inc. Metropolitan and Metropolitan Commercial Bank are registered trademarks of Metropolitan Commercial Bank 2014. Use of the Card is subject to the terms and conditions of the applicable Cardholder Agreement and fee schedule, if any.

You've probably heard that the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) network is on track to experience a planned protocol change via a hard fork on November 15, 2018. Here's what you need to know about how this hard fork will affect your BCH-to-dollar load option for the BitPay Card:

What's happening with Bitcoin Cash?

BitPay's system uses the primary software implementation of Bitcoin Cash called Bitcoin ABC. Bitcoin ABC has scheduled a Bitcoin Cash protocol change via hard fork on November 15th.

While non-backward-compatible hard forks allow for rapid protocol innovation, they also carry a risk of creating a permanent split in a network. It is possible that Bitcoin Cash will experience this kind of split. This would create two versions of the Bitcoin Cash chain, resulting in disruptions for Bitcoin Cash payments.

How does this affect my BitPay Card loads?

To protect Bitcoin Cash users during the hard fork, BitPay will temporarily pause Bitcoin Cash payment processing. This means that BCH-to-dollar loads for your BitPay Card will be unavailable starting two hours prior to the expected start of the hard fork, at about 10 AM EST.

You will still be able to use BTC-to-dollar loads during this time. If you use Bitcoin Cash primarily, you might want to load up your card in advance if you need to spend during the time of the fork.

Do I need to do anything to prepare for the fork?

Your funds held in US dollars on the BitPay Card are not at risk from this fork. Your BitPay Card will continue to work whenever you swipe with merchants or get cash from Visa-compatible ATMS.

If you use the BitPay wallet or another Bitcoin Cash wallet, we strongly advise against sending transactions during the time of the fork. Bitcoin Cash transactions will be at increased risk of loss or double-spending. Funds you hold in your own wallet will not be at risk.

What's next after this fork?

BitPay has not made any plans to migrate from the Bitcoin ABC implementation of Bitcoin Cash to a different implementation. BitPay will closely monitor network conditions and the chains resulting from a chain split. We will restore Bitcoin Cash-to-dollar loads when we are confident that you can pay securely, and we will notify you accordingly. Until then, if you have any questions or concerns please reach out to our customer success team.

The BitPay Visa Prepaid Card is issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank, member FDIC, pursuant to a license from Visa, U.S.A. Inc. Metropolitan and Metropolitan Commercial Bank are registered trademarks of Metropolitan Commercial Bank 2014. Use of the Card is subject to the terms and conditions of the applicable Cardholder Agreement and fee schedule, if any.

Note: For overpaid invoices, the amount due on the invoice is automatically credited to the merchant once the transaction reaches 6 confirmations. However, the merchant can refundthe overpaid amount.

Log in to your BitPay merchant account and select the Payments view from the left panel.

Select the desired invoice in the Payments view.

Click Resolveat the topof the page to proceed.

Select Refund Overpayment and then click Next.

If the purchasers wallet provided a refund address to use, you will have the option to use the provided address. Otherwise, you can specify an refund bitcoin address. Click the View Confirmation button to continue.

Confirm the amount to refund (this must match the overpaidamount listed above the field) and click Refund Payment.

You will be returned to the Payment Details view for the invoice, which states A refund is pending approval from BitPay at the top of the screen. The status of the invoice will be changed to Paid once the refund has been processed. Refunds are typically processed within 24 hours, but we ask that you allow up to 1-2 business days.

Sorry to hear that! We want to make sure we can help you out. Submit a request for help here: https://help.bitpay.com/requestHelp

This guide will show you how to set up two-factor authentication (2FA) on your BitPay accountfor your BitPay Card using the Google Authenticator app. Device-based two-factor authentication is a powerful way to secure an account login.

1. Download the Google Authenticator app on your Android or iOS device.

2. Login to your BitPay account.

3.Look at the list on the left side of the screen under My Card. Click Settings and scroll down to the bottom of the page.

4.At the bottom of the settings page you will see a QR code for your unique authentication key.

5. Open the Google Authenticator app and scan the provided QR code. This will create a Google Authenticator code in your Google Authenticator app.

6. Enter the Google Authenticator code into your BitPay dashboard and click Enable.

Remember that without your Google Authenticator app you will not be able to access your BitPay account.

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The BitPay Visa Prepaid Card is issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank, member FDIC, pursuant to a license from Visa, U.S.A. Inc. Metropolitan and Metropolitan Commercial Bank are registered trademarks of Metropolitan Commercial Bank 2014. Use of the Card is subject to the terms and conditions of the applicable Cardholder Agreement and fee schedule, if any.

To pay a BitPay invoice you must use a Payment Protocol enabled wallet. Payment Protocol ensures the payment you send is exactly the right amount. It also makes sure you include a high enough miner fee for the network to confirm your transaction.

With Payment Protocol, youdon'tneed to worry about failed payments, delayed orders, or dealing with refunds. Payment Protocol also adds new security to payments, protecting you from sending payments to imposters or attackers. Learn more about why BitPay chose Payment Protocol wallets for payments.

In addition to not supporting Payment Protocol, Coinbase is not a cryptocurrency wallet. Coinbase says they are a hosted wallet service. A hosted wallet service has pros and cons, outlined in our blog post on Wallets vs. Exchanges.

One of the downsides to a hosted wallet service is slower transactions. Cryptocurrency exchanges have millions of users and hold a large quantity of cryptocurrency. Therefore, they try to send your transaction as efficiently as possible. Exchanges do this by grouping your transaction with other transactions. This means that it can take longer than normal to get your transaction broadcast to the network. Outgoing transactions typically go out every few hours.

BitPay invoice payment windows expire within 15 minutes. This means transactions from an exchange are often too slow to successfully pay a BitPay merchant. This is one of the reasons why BitPay requires all payments to be made with a secure, Payment Protocol compatible wallet. To pay a BitPay invoice, we recommend transferring your spending bitcoin from an account service to a true bitcoin wallet.

Heres our guide for paying a BitPay invoice using Payment Protocol.

Check out our list of Payment Protocol compatible wallets.

To start the BitPay ID application process, follow the prompts on your invoice or navigate to this page.

Select BitPay ID and click Continue to proceed.

reach out to BitPays support team

On the next prompt, enter your email address and click on Continue to proceed.

On the next prompt, enter a very strong password, review and agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, then click Create account to proceed

Check the verification email that was sent to the submitted email address. Click on the Email Didnt Arrive button if you do not receive the verification email.

From the verification email, click on Complete Verification which will open a new browser tab and redirect you to the BitPay Dashboard.

To unlock higher limits for purchases over 3000 USD or to claim refunds over 1000 USD, click on Get Verified under Unlock Higher Limits to proceed to the verification process.

Click on Proceed and complete the BitPay ID verification process by submitting any supported documents, taking a selfie, and confirming the submitted information.

After completing the BitPay ID verification process, there may be a short delay before a success confirmation page is displayed. Clicking Continue will redirect you to the BitPay Dashboard.

If youre unable to complete verification, please .

Bitcoin Core developers Gavin Andresen and Mike Hearn introduced Payment Protocol back in 2013 in Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) 70. While Payment Protocol is now a few years old, its security and usability enhancements are still new to many people.

Since wallets must be compatible with Payment Protocol in order to pay BitPay invoice, we're taking some time in this post to answer some of your most common questions about Payment Protocol.

Basic Glossary

Wallet the software app you're using to make a payment

Merchant a business accepting your payment

BitPay Invoice the BitPay payment screen

Address a string of number or letters from which and to which you can send Bitcoin

Bitcoin Network the network that processes Bitcoin transactions

Blockchain the open record of past Bitcoin transaction

Miner Fees the fees wallets pay to get transactions added to the blockchain

Exchange Rate how much Bitcoin is worth in US dollars, or another currency

The Basics of Payment Protocol

Q. What is Payment Protocol?

Payment Protocol does for blockchain payments what HTTPS did for the internet. It is a method for secure communication between Bitcoin wallets and websites receiving payments from those wallets.

Payment Protocol-compatible wallets communicate directly with a website's (the payment recipient) servers about the content of the payment request: the address and the amount, as well as other details which might be relevant to the payment. Wallets and payment services using Payment Protocol can automatically and securely lock in verified payment information directly from merchants.

View how a Payment Protocol Bitcoin payment works:

Q. What is this address format? Why can't I send to a bitcoin address?

bitcoin:?r=https://bitpay.com/i/XJ6Sv1EcdGVYUeiztNfWN

This is a Payment Protocol URL. Your Payment Protocol-compatible wallet processes this URL to fetch the payment information from BitPay's system.

You are still sending to a Bitcoin address, and funds are still recorded on the Bitcoin blockchain like with any other transaction. But Payment Protocol lets your wallet find out other important details besides just the address.

Is a BitPay invoice still valid and unexpired? What miner fee should you include so that the payment will be confirmed in time? With Payment Protocol, your wallet can know this.

more results

The Why of Payment Protocol

Q. What are the benefits of Payment Protocol?

The Payment Protocol conventions offer several improvements over the use of raw addresses and amounts for payments. The authors of the original BIP-70 proposal Mike Hearn and Gavin Andresen said it best. Payment Protocol provides the following:

Human-readable, secure payment destinations-- customers will be asked to authorize payment to "example.com" instead of an inscrutable, 34-character bitcoin address.

Secure proof of payment, which the customer can use in case of a dispute with the merchant.

Resistance from man-in-the-middle attacks that replace a merchant's bitcoin address with an attacker's address before a transaction is authorized with a hardware wallet.

Payment received messages, so the customer knows immediately that the merchant has received, and has processed (or is processing) their payment.

Refund addresses, automatically given to the merchant by the customer's wallet software, so merchants do not have to contact customers before refunding overpayments or orders that cannot be fulfilled for some reason.

Interested in learning more about Payment Protocol? Read the specs released in 2013.

Q. Why is BitPay requiring Payment Protocol payments?

BitPay introduced a Payment Protocol wallet requirement to reduce and eliminate the risk of three common and expensive payment errors which were common with payments to raw Bitcoin addresses.

There are three main kinds of payment errors that can happen when someone pays a BitPay merchant:

Underpayments: payments that don't include enough Bitcoin to finish the order. These have to be refunded, and the order doesn't complete.

Overpayments: payments that include too much Bitcoin. The overpaid amount needs to be refunded, but the order does complete.

Late payments: payments sent to expired BitPay invoices or to addresses associated with old BitPay invoices. The order does not complete unless the merchant authorizes . This process is manual.

Before BitPay began to require Payment Protocol wallets for payments, the BitPay platform (and BitPay merchants) often had error rates often ranging around a few percentage points or even higher.

We have manually refunded and automatically refunded tens of thousands of these payments. We and our merchants have answered tens of thousands of customer complaints and support tickets around these bad payment experiences. Payment Protocol allows us to dramatically reduce the risk of these payment mistakes, among other benefits.

Learn more about why we moved to adopt Payment Protocol URLs and QR codes in place of bitcoin addresses.

Read our CEO's recent post on the security and usability gains Payment Protocol brings to BitPay users.

Q. How do underpayments and overpayments happen?

Underpayments and overpayments typically happen for one of a few reasons:

Customers enter a dollar amount instead of the exact Bitcoin amount shown on the BitPay invoice. Because their wallets use a different USD <> BTC exchange rate than BitPay, a different amount arrives than is needed to fully pay the BitPay merchant.

A customer sends a payment from an exchange that deducts a withdrawal fee from the outgoing payment.

A customer accidentally or purposefully enters an incorrect Bitcoin amount.

Q. Why do late payments cause BitPay payments to fail?

The prices of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash are always changing. To make sure these price fluctuationsdon'tharm our merchants, BitPay guarantees an exchange rate for each invoice for 15 minutes. This gives the buyer an exact BTC amount to send to pay a certain USD amount for instance, for 15 minutes, a BitPay invoice would lock in a $10 USD product as worth 0.0015 Bitcoin.

This payment window helps to make accepting payments with Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash stable and predictable even when the price of either is not. That stability makes easier for new merchants to start accepting cryptocurrency.

When someone sends ("broadcasts")* a payment to a BitPay invoice after that 15-minute window, the payment is late and either has to be refunded or applied to the invoice. If and when we apply the payment to the order after 15 minutes, the price of Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash has sometimes changed enough for the payment to underpay or overpay the invoice.

Payment Protocol is helping us to eliminate the problem of late payments. Wallets can check the status of a BitPay invoice and prevent broadcasting of late payments.

* Payments do not have to be confirmed in order to fall within the 15 minute payment window. They only need to be broadcast to the Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash networks.

Q. Why are payment errors such a problem?

Payment errors create a terrible user experience for Bitcoin purchasers, and they create headaches that can make businesses reconsider accept Bitcoin at all.

Imagine a customer whose wallet or exchange sends an underpayment. The order fails, and the customer is out the time and money (in miner fees) sent to attempt the order. BitPay refunds the payment, but since it costs money to send a refund on a blockchain, the customer gets less money back than they started with. If miner fee levels rise above than the original payment amount, they may not get a refund at all.

The customer may try again, but after this many delays and frustrations, some customers and merchants may give up on Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash for that particular purchase. They may give up on blockchain payments altogether. Non-refundable underpayments and late payments (typically broadcast late from exchanges or Coinbase accounts) contributed to Valve's (Steam) decision to stop accepting Bitcoin in 2017, for instance.

Q. Why would businesses care about payment errors?

Underpayments and overpayments and late payments create serious issues for merchants who are deciding whether they want to add or keep support for Bitcoin payments. When orders aren't completing and customers are losing time and/or money, businesses care.

Imagine if similar payment error types happened with credit cards. If even 5 in every 100 credit card transactions required a refund due to a payment error, most businesses (especially ones processing tens of thousands of transactions a day) would refuse to take them. There have been times when error rates on BitPay's bitcoin payment processing platform have exceeded that 5% rate.

We want to be able to use blockchains like Bitcoin to process payments for the world. But at the pre-Payment Protocol error rates, this would simply be impossible. If we kept this error rate and scaled to process the hundred million+ transactions processed on credit card networks like Visa daily, our support team and our merchants might be processing support issues in the millions.

Q. Why don't you just refund the payment errors, or credit small underpayments?

When payments don't complete, our merchants have upset customers and no completed order.

While BitPay's system already has an automatic refund claim process for most payment errors, refunds are not a good experience for either the buyer or the merchant.

Like all bitcoin transactions, refunds cost miner fees to send. Since this cost (and the Network Cost of the initial payment) is deducted from the refund amount sent back, any buyer who makes a payment error won't just lose time -they will also lose money.

Q. Is Payment Protocol actually making a difference?

Yes! When we began requiring payment protocol wallets, we saw the count of payment errors fall significantly. Underpayment errors once made up several percent or more of the payments users sent to BitPay invoices. Now underpayments make up less than a tenth of a percent.

All payment error types only make up 0.27% of the total dollar volume received by BitPay, vs 8.45% in the month leading up to Payment Protocol.

We've seen this change reflected across our company and product. At one point, developing underpayment and overpayment acceptance tools was an urgent need for our business and for our merchants. Now these errors have declined so much that we have been able to remove these tools from our codebase (and make the features people really want).

Payment Protocol and Wallet Compatibility

Q. What wallets support Payment Protocol?

Quite a few popular and highly-rated wallets now support Payment Protocol payments. View the full list.

Q. Why isn't there a backwards-compatible raw address option for advanced users?

Before we introduced a Payment Protocol requirement, we modified the BitPay payment experience to warn non-advanced users about the risk of underpayments.

Unfortunately, this wasn't enough to reduce payment errors. When it's easy to bypass a warning, most users will continue to make the same payment errors.

Sometimes these mistakes result from incorrect user entry, but they more often results from poor wallet design or bad payment architecture.

For instance, cryptocurrency exchanges are not meant to be used for commerce payments (they can take hours to send transactions), but many cryptocurrency adopters try to use them to pay. Some wallets also use different bitcoin exchange rates than BitPay's. So if a user selects to send a dollar amount in his wallet, it may be received as a different amount.

Wallets or exchanges which still use manual payments often are not taking measures to make sure that payments are sent exactly. When commerce is involved, this really matters. We need to create a consistent, convenient payment flow that works every time. Payment Protocol offers that for all users, from advanced to beginner.

Q. What if my wallet doesn't support Payment Protocol?

There is no need to leave your wallet behind. If you need to pay a BitPay merchant, just send the appropriate amount of funds to a compatible wallet to use for your payment.

Not sure how to do this? We have created a video that shows how to move funds out of exchange services.

Q. Isn't Payment Protocol hard to implement in wallets?

One big reason some wallets haven't implemented Payment Protocol is simply the development time required to do it. Payment Protocol wasn't easy for us to implement either, so this is a valid criticism.

Fortunately, we have cut that development time significantly with our simplified Payment Protocol JSON interface for wallet developers. Any wallet can use this new interface to quickly become fully compatible with BitPay invoices.

Learn more about BitPay's JSON Payment Protocol interface.

View the JSON Payment Protocol interface on GitHub.

If you are a wallet developer, we would love to get your feedback, answer your questions, and learn how to make implementation of Payment Protocol easier for you. Reach out to our team !

Q. Why are there so few Bitcoin Cash (BCH) wallets that support Payment Protocol?

Bitcoin Cash is still relatively new, so many wallets have not yet adopted Payment Protocol. However, we have already seen the Electron Cash, Bitcoin Cash (Schildbach fork), and Bitcoin.com wallets become fully compatible with BitPay invoices, joining BitPay and Copay. And more are coming! Follow us on Twitter or Facebook for news as more wallets implement Payment Protocol.

Payment Protocol and Security

Q. How does Payment Protocol make my payments more secure?

Payment Protocol removes the risk of "man in the middle attacks" - special kinds of attacks in which fraudsters insert themselves into your transaction and replace the real bitcoin address with their own. These man in the middle attacks can take the form of malicious third-party scripts and extensions, malicious Tor exit nodes, or viruses.

This was quite a common occurrence, and it is still possible for services using bitcoin addresses to be compromised by this attack. By requiring authentication of the receiver (in our case, BitPay), Payment Protocol ensures that you do not send money to people you aren't intending to pay.

Q. How does Payment Protocol affect my privacy?

Since your wallet communicates with a server for a Payment Protocol payment, the payment recipient (BitPay's) server will know and log your wallet's IP address. This does not expose any additional personally identifiable information about you, but many privacy-minded Internet users are understandably concerned about revealing their IP addresses.

Since your computer's IP address is already logged by BitPay.com (and the merchant's website) whenever you view and pay a BitPay invoice, the only new IP address logging happens if you are using a wallet on another device with a separate IP address.

It is possible to mask your wallet's IP address with a VPN or Tor whenever you connect to the Internet pay. BitPay processes payments for a number of great VPN providers.

Q. Doesn't Payment Protocol rely on "legacy signature security"? (ADVANCED)

Some wallet developers have questioned Payment Protocol's use of SSL and PKI (public key infrastructure) for signing bitcoin payment requests.

x509 SSL certificates are the same certificates used to verify the identity of sites like Google.com and Amazon.com and BitPay.com. SSL isn't perfect, but it's the technology that keeps you safe while you're browsing all of the websites you rely on everyday, from your bank's site and your HR provider's website to Gmail and Twitter. If PKI is compromised then every https-protected site is compromised as well, including Google, Facebook, and other widely used sites. We have no reason to suspect this.

These criticisms are not new. Thankfully, BIP 70's architect Mike Hearn answered them when BIP 70 was announced. You can read Mikes response. In it, he concludes:

"Usable security is hard. When tested, widely used systems often turn out to be nothing more than placebos. SSL is one of very few crypto systems thats in daily usage by hundreds of millions of people."

In short, SSL and PKI may not be perfect, they're very good and very useful for verifying the identity of the person you're paying or visiting on the web.

We have also introduced our own alternative to x509 certificates by enabling wallets to use Bitcoin cryptography (ECDSA signatures) to verify the authenticity of payment requests. From our announcement :

"This new support for ECDSA signatures significantly reduces the development effort required for wallets to support Payment Protocol. The original BIP-70 Payment Protocol spec requires wallet developers to write code to support and verify a PKI/X.509 SSL certificate authority (CA) chain. This can be complex and difficult for many wallets to implement. With BitPay's JSON Payment Protocol interface, wallets can choose to verify the details of payment requests signed by ECDSA signatures, without the need to support X.509 certificate validation."

More Questions and Resources

Is there something we haven't covered that you want to know about Payment Protocol? Send us your tips or article requests at [email protected]. We want to address your questions.

If you want to read more, check out our previous work on Payment Protocol:

Learn more about why we moved to adopt Payment Protocol URLs and QR codes in place of bitcoin addresses.

Read our CEO's recent post on the security and usability gains Payment Protocol brings to BitPay users.

Check out from our implementation of a Payment Protocol requirement on BitPay invoices.

The BitPay Prepaid Visa is a reloadable prepaid debit card, not a credit card.

Credit Card - The issuer extends a line of credit. With each transaction, you are borrowing against the line of credit.

Debit Card - Funds come from cardholder's checking account. The amount in your checking account is the amount available to spend on your card.

Prepaid Debit Card - Funds are preloaded onto the card from another source of funds. The amount available on the card is the amount loaded onto the card.

The BitPay Card is a prepaid debit card. This means you can't spend more than the balance at any given time. The BitPay Card is funded through conversion of cryptocurrency to USD for spending anywhere Visa is accepted.

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The BitPay Visa Prepaid Card is issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank, member FDIC, pursuant to a license from Visa, U.S.A. Inc. Metropolitan and Metropolitan Commercial Bank are registered trademarks of Metropolitan Commercial Bank 2014. Use of the Card is subject to the terms and conditions of the applicable Cardholder Agreement and fee schedule, if any.

From the Payments tab in the BitPay merchant dashboard, use the filter option in order to locate the invoice for which you have a pending refund request (use the BitPay invoice ID as filter option). Click on the corresponding payment entry to access the payment details

A message on top will indicate if there is a pending refund request for the selected BitPay invoice.Scroll down to the bottom of the page to display the transaction history for this BitPay invoice.

Click on the inverted arrow button next to the "refund Pending" entry. This will display the Cancel button which allows you to cancel the pending refund request.

No, a bitcoin transaction which has already been broadcast to the network cannot be reversed. This is an important feature of the bitcoin protocol which prevents payment fraud.

If you accidentally send your bitcoin to an address being used by a BitPay merchant which you've already paid, please contact our support team by submitting a request.

If you have sent your bitcoin to any address not associated to BitPay or a BitPay merchant, there is nothing that BitPay can do to recover your payment for you. Please contact the person or business you paid if you need to request a refund or return of a mistaken payment.

You can search and view your wallet's transactions by transaction ID or bitcoin address on a block explorer like BitPay's Insight.

People sometimes confuse BitPay and the Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash networks themselves. Thats okay, but its important for all of our users to know what BitPay can and can't do to help them with bitcoin transactions.

What BitPay CAN do:

Look up Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash transactions on the public Bitcoin blockchain using our block explorer Insight

Find details on bitcoin transactions that were sent to us or our merchants.

Refund bitcoin transactions that were sent to a BitPay merchant that didnt make it to the merchant due to an underpayment, overpayment, or late payment.

What BitPay can NOT do:

Access your BitPay or Copay wallet or control/change/view/reverse any transactions received to or sent from your wallet

Refund any and all bitcoin transactions made on the Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash networks

Refund fully-paid BitPay invoices that have been credited to the merchant.

Refund your bitcoin transaction for free (we pay the same bitcoin miner fees you do)

Make your bitcoin transaction confirm faster ( see how transaction confirmations work ) or refund unconfirmed transactions.

BitPay is a big part of the Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash networks and the overall bitcoin ecosystem, but only a part. Satoshi Nakamoto designed bitcoin as a distributed payment network and a decentralized currency. This means that no one company controls bitcoin. This is one of the things which makes bitcoin so powerful.

You do not need an account on bitpay.com to use your BitPay Wallet. Your BitPay Wallet is secured using your device and your private key: by design, BitPay never has access to your bitcoin or your wallet.

Have you backed up your BitPay Wallet? It's extremely important that you do so.If you don't set up a backup and lose your wallet (hard drive failure, theft, etc.), then the funds inside will not be able to be recovered. (Note that this is true for all bitcoin wallets.) See: I lost my wallet or changed my phone. What can I do to restore my wallet?

We have a guide on how to back up your wallet here in this help article, as well as a video guide:

You don't need a second device, you just need to copy down the recovery phrase and keep it somewhere safe. Please don't do anything like email it to yourself or keep a copy on the device where your wallet is. If you do this and then your device is stolen, then the thief would be able to steal your wallet's funds as well.

You can review the BitPay Wallet's Terms of Service and all of our help center's articles on the Wallet here.

If a BitPay merchant has initiated a cryptocurrency refund for an order you placed, you will receive an email from [email protected] telling you that the merchant has authorized a refund. You will receive this email at the email address that you entered when you paid the invoice.

Note: Full and partial refund email links expire within 3 days, so please claim your refund within 3 days of receiving your email.

Follow these steps to submit your refund information and submit the refund for processing by BitPay:

1. Open the email from the merchant and click Collect Refund. approved document

2. Enter your wallet address for your refund.

You will be refunded in the same cryptocurrency you used to pay the invoice.

A valid Bitcoin address is a set of around 34 mixed case (upper/lower) alphanumeric characters (0-9, a-z, A-Z) which start with a 1 or a 3.

A valid Bitcoin Cash address begins with the letters bitcoincash, followed by a long series of letters and numbers.

A valid Ethereum address is a set of 42 hexadecimal characters (0-9, a-f or A-F) which starts with 0x.

3. Your refund will be sent to your refund address within 1-2 business days.

You will receive the refund amount shown under Amount to Be Refunded. In the example shown, you will receive a bitcoin amount equivalent to 5 USD at the current exchange rate when the refund is processed.

You will receive the following email to confirm that your refund is processing.

If your refund is the equivalent of 1000 USD or more, you will also need to complete the BitPay ID verification process in addition to the steps above. You will need to provide your legal name, country of residence, and birthdate. Then, you will take pictures of an and take a selfie. Be sure to type your legal name exactly as printed on your identification document. Ensure that the entire document including all four corners is visible.

As cryptocurrency grows, new adopters follow. At BitPay, we want to welcome new users and provide them the tools to make the most of the BitPay and cryptocurrency ecosystems.

This article covers topics relevant to new wallet users, such as the basics of BitPay and how to send and receive cryptocurrency. These topics are explained in simple language with links to helpful articles and videos for getting started with the BitPay Wallet.

About Bitcoin

Bitcoin is a digital currency that has many of the same characteristics as cash. However, bitcoin is much more secure than paper money. With bitcoin, you can send money over the internet directly to another person without a middleman.

Here are the important features of Bitcoin:

1) Secure: You own your bitcoin by keeping track of a private key. It's a digital signature that no one can forge or fake. Because you're the only one who owns your private key, there is no reset or recovery. You have total control and total responsibility over your funds.

2) Fast: Instead of entering all of your personal information when you buy something with bitcoin, usually all you need to do is scan a QR code or copy and paste a receiving address to pay. Then, with a swipe or the press of a button, you can send funds to anyone anywhere in the world in minutes.

3) Pseudonymous: Transactions, addresses, and wallets are not connected to real-world identities. While it is possible to analyze the flow of transactions in order to make inferences about the owners of funds, there is no such thing as a bitcoin account.

4) Global: Bitcoin is not owned or controlled by any single entity, which makes it a borderless technology. Anyone can send any amount of bitcoin anywhere, anytime, for minimal transaction fees.

5.) Irreversible: After confirmation, a transaction cannot be reversed. Bitcoin is a uniquely secure payment method which eliminates chargeback risks.

How about Ethereum?

As a cryptocurrency, Ether shares many of the same features as Bitcoin. Depending on the coin, implementations may differ but the concepts are common.

About BitPay

BitPay is a cryptocurrency payment processor which offers merchants the ability to receive blockchain payments. BitPay also offers the BitPay Card which is a debit card that can be loaded using cryptocurrency. However, BitPay is not an exchange, and we do not offer the service of buying and selling cryptocurrency.

Finally, BitPay develops two cryptocurrency wallet applications: BitPay and Copay, which let you manage your funds!

The BitPay Wallet

The BitPay Wallet is an application that allows you to easily manage your blockchain finances in a secure way. We have carefully designed this app for new users, without hiding important information or removing powerful features.

Here are some of the top advantages of the BitPay Wallet:

Non-Custodial. You own your wallet private keys. Unlike Coinbase and other custodial services, you are in control of your wallet and the funds within. BitPay has no access to your wallet. (Why don't I have an online account for my BitPay Wallet? )

Get real security by using a real wallet. Create a basic wallet for immediate payments or lock down your security in a multisig wallet by requiring payments to be approved by up to 12 different devices. The app PIN and the wallet Encrypt Password provide additional security to your device and funds.

Purchase securely. Full Payment Protocol support verifies and secures payments to enabled services, including all BitPay merchants.

With the BitPay Wallet you can:

Store funds in Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ethereum (ETH), and multiple ERC20 stablecoins.

Send and receive cryptocurrency.

Turn your crypto into dollars with the BitPay Card. You will also be able to load and manage your BitPay Card within the BitPay App. ( Where is the BitPay Card available? )

Purchase Amazon, Delta, Google PlayStore, and many more gift cards.

Buy and sell cryptocurrency by connecting to Coinbase through the BitPay App. (Coinbase account required).

Pay invoices that use Payment Protocol.

Create shared wallets.

Exchange cryptocurrencies using ShapeShift (ShapeShift account required).

Sweep a paper wallet.

However, there are some things you cannot do with any true crypto wallet, including the BitPay Wallet:

Store fiat money (USD, EUR, JPY, etc). In a true wallet you store cryptocurrency.

Send funds directly to bank accounts.

Store crypto other than those supported. If you want to use other cryptocurrencies, you will need a wallet app for that currency.

Getting started

First: Install the BitPay App

Begin by installing the BitPay Wallet app. Please follow our guide: How to Install the BitPay Wallet.

Second: Create a Wallet

If you are new to the crypto world, you will need to create a cryptocurrency wallet.

If you already own a wallet and have its 12-word recovery phrase, you might want to import the wallet on the BitPay App to start managing your funds.

Third: Back up your Wallet

The last step in setting up your wallet is to back the wallet up. This step is extremely important:

First, you must back up the wallet to use it.

Second, you must write down the recovery phrase and store it securely. If you do not, you will have no way to recover the wallet and you could lose the wallet and all your funds. There is no way to recover the wallet if you do not have the recovery phrase. BitPay cannot recover your wallet or your phrase for you.

Watch our Youtube video on how to back up your BitPay Wallet:

Loading the wallet with funds

To load your wallet, you need to have cryptocurrency either in another wallet or on an exchange. If you do not have funds, you can purchase cryptocurrency on an exchange that operates in your country.

To purchase cryptocurrency on an exchange, you will likely need to use a bank account as the payment method. Most exchanges do not allow you to use credit cards to buy cryptocurrency.

For most exchanges, the process will be:

Create an account on the exchange.

Register a payment method.

Buy cryptocurrency.

Send the funds to your BitPay Wallet.

If you have funds on an exchange and need to move them to your BitPay Wallet:

Sending and Receiving Funds

After your wallet has been properly backed up, it is ready to send and receive funds.

To learn how to send and receive funds, please refer to our guide:

Because transactions are not reversible, we strongly recommend caution when sending and receiving funds.

When sending

Double check the destination address with the receiver. When entering the address, either scan or copy and paste it- do not type it in.

When receiving

Before giving your address to others who want to send you funds, make sure the address is correct. When sharing the address, either let the sender scan it or copy and paste the address- do not type it in.

Cashing your money out

If you have funds in your wallet and want to cash them out, you will need to sell your crypto through an exchange. BitPay does not provide exchange services, though eligible cardholders may use their BitPay Card to convert crypto into dollars. The BitPay App does have integrations with some popular exchanges.

For most exchanges, the process will be:

Look for an exchange that operates in your country.

Create an account. (Requirements, screening processes, and conditions can vary for each exchange.)

Register a payment method to receive funds.

Send your cryptocurrency to the exchange.

Sell the cryptocurrency.

Withdraw the funds from the exchange and receive local currency in your bank account.

Purchasing Gift Cards

The BitPay Wallet offers gift cards from several brands. The gift cards availability depends on your country. Learn how to purchase gift cards with crypto from your BitPay App.

Paying Invoices

Making purchases is one common use for cryptocurrency. The BitPay Wallet supports Payment Protocol, which lets you make payments securely.

The BitPay Card

The BitPay Card is a simple and practical way to turn your cryptocurrency into fiat and make purchases with your cards balance. Get the card and use it to spend anywhere Visa is accepted!

Connecting the card to your wallet app

The BitPay debit card can be linked to the BitPay App, which lets you top up the card from your cryptocurrency wallets in the app.

Using the Coinbase integration

With the BitPay Wallet, you can connect your Coinbase account to the app to buy and sell cryptocurrency. This feature requires you to have a fully set up Coinbase account.

To connect the BitPay Wallet to your Coinbase account, you need:

A Coinbase account

A cryptocurrency wallet in Coinbase

At least one cryptocurrency wallet in the BitPay App

Your phone, as you will likely receive a verification code from Coinbase to authorize the app

Before connecting the app to your Coinbase account, make sure:

You are using an updated browser, such as Google Chrome. Some users report problems with certain versions of Firefox, Safari, and other browsers.

The coin of the wallet that shows up on the Coinbase website authorization screen matches the coin of the wallet you have on the app.

You tap the Authorize button on the Coinbase site until it says Authorizing. Sometimes you have to tap two or more times.

Your mobile operating system (Android / iOS) is up to date.

If you cannot make it work and you still need to access your Coinbase account, we recommend you try on another device with a different operating system. We have tested some browsers which work on mobile devices but not on desktop.

Buy/Sell with Coinbase

After your Coinbase account is connected to the BitPay App, you will be able to buy and sell cryptocurrency. In order to buy crypto, a payment method must be set up on your Coinbase account.

Trade cryptocurrency using ShapeShift

The ShapeShift integration lets you convert between cryptocurrencies from the BitPay App. You must have a ShapeShift account previously set up. Learn how to start trading with ShapeShift.

BitPay ID verification can fail for a number of reasons. Errors are catalogued below with an explanation and suggested solution for each error.

No document detected

Review the document and be sure that the entire document is visible in the frame of the photo.

File not uploading, Unsupported File Type, "File size too large"

Files must be .jpg or .png file types, and no larger than 10 MB. If you receive one of these errors, make sure you are uploading a .jpg or .png file and that the file you are trying to upload is under 10 MB.

"No face found"

Your photo must include your face for identification purposes. Make sure that your face is in the center of the screen and that it is not covered.

"Multiple faces found"

Your face must be the only face in the frame of your identification photo. Make sure that there are no other faces in frame for your identification photo.

"Connection lost"

The network connection dropped during verification. Please try again.

Glare detected

Double check your documents to be sure that there is no glare and that all text is clear and legible. Resend a new picture if necessary.

"An error occurred while loading the component", "Check your mobile number is correct",

You'll need to restart your verification on your computer.

Your camera isn't working", "camera_inactive", "No camera detected", "camera_inactive_no_fallback", "Having camera problems?"

If your camera is not functional or is disconnected, try using your mobile device to continue the verification process. If you do not have a mobile device, you will need to verify on a device which has a working camera.

"Looks like you took too long"

Remember to press stop when you're done taking your photo. Re-take the photo.

To create a payment button for accepting cryptocurrency payments, log in to your BitPay merchant dashboard, select Payment Tools, and click Payment Buttons.

Complete the necessary fields and select the Generate button.

Afteryou'vefilled out the fields, copy the HTML code provided. Then, copy and paste the HTML code onto your webpage.

Watch our FAQvideo to learn how to create a cryptocurrency payment button:

The BitPay and Copay wallets give you the option to adjust the fee schedule. Thisisn'ta manual fee that allows you to set the exact amount of satoshis. Instead, the BitPay and Copay wallets use estimatefee from Bitcoin Core. As defined by Bitcoin ABC, estimatefee sets a fee that should include your transaction in an appropriate number of blocks dependent on the fee schedule you assign.

Setting the fee rate policy only changes the fee for P2P transactions. Any time you pay an invoice through Payment Protocol, the fee is set by the invoice and based on the merchants preferences.

To adjust the transaction fee, follow the below steps:

From the home screen of the app, click on the Settings icon on the top right.

2. Click on Bitcoin network fee policy.

There are 5 policies, ranging from Urgent all the way to Super Economy. Urgent will try to include your transaction within the next 2 blocks. Super Economy will try to include your transaction within the next 4 hours. You can see the current satoshis/byte that each fee will use for this transaction and decide which fee is best for your situation. After you have selected the desired fee, you can click back at the top and return to the home screen.

You can change the fee level on the confirm step of sending a transaction, as illustrated below:

If you do not have your backup phrase:

If you do not have your backup phrase, then unfortunately you have lost your wallet and all funds in the wallet. For security, 12 word backup phrases are not stored on BitPay servers, so BitPay cannot recover funds for you.

If you still have your backup phrase:

Open the app and go to the gear icon in the upper right corner. Then scroll down and choose Create New Key. Then choose Import Wallet and the Recovery Phrase tab. Type out your 12 word recovery phrase and click Import to restore your funds.

If you have a file or text backup:

Open the app and go to Settings (the gear icon) in the top right corner. Then scroll down and choose Create New Key. Next, choose Import Wallet and the File/Text tab.

* File format: from Windows, Linux, Mac, and Chrome App (previous format, the Chrome app is no longer supported). Upload the file.

* Text format: from mobile devices. Paste the json format as plain-text.

Note: All File/Text backups have a password. You will need to enter this password in order to restore your wallet.

To protect your privacy, the BitPay App generates new addresses for your wallet automatically after you use a bitcoin (or bitcoin cash) address one time. ( Why does my BitPay wallets address keep changing? )

All bitcoin and bitcoin cash transactions are public, traceable, and permanently stored in the blockchain. For these reasons, bitcoin and bitcoin cash addresses should only be used one time and users should not disclose their addresses. When addresses are re-used, they allow others to more easily and reliably determine that the address being used is yours.

When creating a new bitcoin or bitcoin cash wallet, you have the option to enable the single address option. The single address option can only be done when you first create a wallet. An existing multiple address wallet cannot be forced to use a single address. In other words, a standard wallet cannot be converted to a single address wallet.

The single address feature will force the wallet to only use one address rather than generating a new address each time. This can be useful for donations or other scenarios where transparency is important.

Some use cases where transparency might be relevant:

Crowdsales

Private Equities

Foundations

Donations

To create a single address wallet:

Open the BitPay App.

Click the gear icon in the upper right corner.

Under Keys, select the key that contains the wallet.

Scroll down the menu and click + Create a new wallet.

Click Basic Wallet. ( What is a Multisignature (Multisig) Wallet? )

Select the currency.

Enter a wallet name.

Click Show advanced options.

Enable Single address (see below).

Click CREATE.

Single address wallets show AUDITABLE in the lower left corner of the header section.

We cannot accept extra payments made to invoices that have received a transaction in the past. You must always generate a new BitPay invoice for each payment.

This allows our system to calculate how much gas it will cost to pay the invoice. The gas fee is based on the most recent block on the Ethereum blockchain.

BitPay invoices also generate exchange rates at the time of the invoice. Accepting only one payment per invoice safeguards against cryptocurrency price volatility. You can learn more about how we get our exchange rates.

When you try to send an ETH payment to a previous invoices address, you will get a notification that the transaction failed. Additionally, you will lose the gas for the transaction. The value of the transaction, however, is returned to your Ethereum account.

Heres an example of what a duplicate, failed transaction looks like on ETH blockchain explorer:

guide to paying a BitPay invoice

For more information on making payments to merchants using BitPay, check out our.

When you pay a BitPay invoice, your payment goes to a BitPay address. We pay network-based miner fees (like you pay to send your transaction) to combine the different cryptocurrency amounts paid to BitPay (a "UTXO sweep"). Then we send the funds to exchanges, where we get the fiat currency to pay BitPay merchants.

We need timely blockchain confirmations for these UTXO sweep transactions so we can exchange funds quickly and pay our merchants promptly. That's why paying an appropriate miner fee is important for us. If the estimated amount of this miner fee is more than 0.01 USD, we charge it to purchasers as a separate fee (the Network Cost fee). The Network Cost fee helps BitPay cover its miner fee costs.

Miner fee costs change for BitPay based on the network conditions of the currency you pay with, so the Network Cost fee also changes. Read our original post about why we introduced the Network Cost in February 2017.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. Didn't I already pay my miner fee?

There is a difference between the Network Cost fee and your miner fee you include with your payment. The cryptocurrency miner fee is usually included with your payment automatically, and it goes directly to the miners.

The Network Cost fee goes to BitPay to cover BitPays miner fee cost for the UTXO sweep of your payment. It is not the same as your miner fee for the miners, but it is based on recommended miner fee levels.

Q. What other purchaser fees does BitPay have?

The Network Cost fee is the only fee BitPay charges to people who pay BitPay invoices.

BitPay charges a 1% processing fee to BitPay merchants. Merchants may choose to pass this fee on to the buyer.

Q. What is BitPay paying miner fees for? What is a UTXO sweep?

When you make a blockchain transaction, you are sending funds to a wallet address controlled by another person (or in this case, BitPay). An Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO) is the unit of cryptocurrency which can actually be used in another transaction.

The miner fees BitPay pays to combine and sweep UTXOs from invoice receiving addresses are a major part of BitPay's costs of processing payments on the blockchains BitPay supports. This cost is not unique to using BitPay. Any business or person accepting on-chain payments has the expense of sweeping UTXOs from payments they receive.

This chart illustrates how your payment moves through BitPay and then to the merchant you are paying. expire without payment

Q. How does BitPay calculate the Network Cost fee?

Miner fees are variable depending on network conditions and on how fast you want your transaction to be confirmed. The Network Cost uses one of the recommended miner fee levels of each of the blockchains we support:

Bitcoin (BTC): We use the local currency value of the BTC fee suggested by the Bitcoin Core "Conservative" 2-block fee estimate. This is the fee level which Bitcoin Core recommends for helping Bitcoin transactions confirm within 2 blocks.

Bitcoin Cash (BCH): We use the local currency value of the BCH fee suggested by the Bitcoin ABC 2-block fee estimate. This is the fee level which Bitcoin ABC recommends for helping Bitcoin Cash transactions confirm within 2 blocks. (The "Conservative" fee estimate mode does not exist in Bitcoin ABC.)

2-block speed allows us to ensure that we can process funds reliably and quickly in all network conditions. Using a lower-than-average miner fee can put a transaction at risk of slow confirmation or no confirmation at all.

The Network Cost fee amount fluctuates. It is tied to network conditions of the Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash networks at that time. For example, if these networks are congested and miner fees rise, the Network Cost also increases.

Q. Where can I see the Network Cost on BitPay invoices?

We show the Network Cost amount in two places on BitPay invoices. You can find this information on the currency selection screen and the invoice total on the payment screen.

Our invoices show the Network Cost in your payment currency as well as your invoice currency.

Q. Why would a Network Cost amount show as $0.00?

If an estimated Network Cost amount is lower than $0.01 and less than 0.05% of the invoice price, BitPay does not show or charge a Network Cost fee.

Q. What if the Network Cost is too high?

If the Network Cost is $1, a $5 payment may be uneconomical for most people. In cases like these, you can let the BitPay invoice . You can also use another supported cryptocurrency with lower fees.

Otherwise, if you want to use your original currency choice, you can combine your purchases and make a larger payment. A $1 Network Cost for a $100 payment might be worth it for you if you want to use a particular currency.

Your wallets encrypted password offers you extra security by requiring this password whenever you:

- Send a transaction or sign a multi-signature transaction

- Export your wallet

- Access your backup phrase

This password cannot be recovered or reset, and the only way to recover a wallet in case you have forgotten the password is by the 12-word recovery phrase. I forgot my wallet's encrypted password. What can I do? It is extremely important to make sure you have the recovery phrase before setting a password.

Sometimes you want to test transactions on the blockchain or implementations for payment solutions. You can do this with test funds on the testnet blockchain so that there is no monetary cost to testing. Testnet bitcoins carry no value and cannot be used to pay. ( What is testnet? How do I avoid testnet Bitcoin scams? )

After you have the BitPay or Copay wallet installed, you can follow the below steps to create a Testnet wallet.

Click on the Settings icon on the top right.

https://testnet.coinfaucet.eu/en/

2. Scroll down to Wallets (Grouped by key) and click on Add Wallet.

3. Select Basic Wallet.

4. Select either an existing key to add the wallet under or tap on Create a new key. The next steps involve creating a new key.

5. Select the currency (Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash) for the wallet.

6. Name the wallet and tap on Show advanced options to specify the wallet as a testnet wallet.

7. Click on Create once the testnet option is selected and a Wallet name is specified.

8. You can choose to protect the wallet with a password if you like.

The testnet wallet has now been created.

Testnet wallets are indicated by the small flask symbol along with a boxed TESTNET text. If you see the flask symbol, you are dealing with a testnet wallet.

Now that you have a wallet set up, you are ready to receive some testnet coins. Testnet bitcoins carry no value. They are solely for testing transactions and implementations.

First, you will need to get the receiving address for your testnet wallet. Click Receive at the bottom of the screen (1) while in the testnet wallet, then click the address at the top to copy it to your phone or computers clipboard (2).

2. Navigate to or your choice of testnet faucet, paste your testnet address, then click Get bitcoins!

3. The faucet will send you a random amount of testnet bitcoins.

4. Within a few minutes you should see the pending transaction and a balance in your testnet wallet.

Your social security number is used to verify your identity so the card's issuing bank can fulfill its regulatory "Know Your Customer" requirements.

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The BitPay Visa Prepaid Card is issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank, member FDIC, pursuant to a license from Visa, U.S.A. Inc. Metropolitan and Metropolitan Commercial Bank are registered trademarks of Metropolitan Commercial Bank 2014. Use of the Card is subject to the terms and conditions of the applicable Cardholder Agreement and fee schedule, if any.

BitPay offers enterprise-grade integrations, plugins, and extensions for many popular shopping carts and billing systems, as well as point of sale solutions.

When accepting blockchain payments, merchants can receive settlement in US Dollars, Euros, GBP and more, all powered by BitPay's enterprise-grade infrastructure.

To start accepting cryptocurrency, simply apply for a BitPay account.

Plugins & Extensions

BitPay provides a collection of plugins and extensions for popular eCommerce software packages.

Magento 1

Magento 2

Wordpress Woocommerce

Wordpress Easy Digital Download

WHMCS

OpenCart

Prestashop

more plugins available on our integrations page

The code and documentation for all of our plugins and extensions are open-source and available on BitPay's GitHub account.

Libraries for Custom Integrations

For integrations that require customization, BitPay provides libraries for a number of popular languages. The code and documentation for all of our libraries are open-source and available on GitHub.

.NET (C#)

Java

PHP

more plugins available on our integrations page

Hosted Solutions

Hosted cart platforms and billing services can be a good alternative to managing technical systems in-house. BitPay partners with the following companies to make accepting cryptocurrency as simple as applying for a BitPay account :

Shopify - How to accept bitcoin with Shopify

3dcart

more hosted solutions available on our integrations page

BitPay also provides a simple, hosted BitPay Checkout for smaller merchants. Merchants can access their Catalog Items to add and modify items in their BitPay Checkout.

Point of Sale (POS) Solutions

BitPay offers a simple web-based application for accepting blockchain payments in person, as well as POS-integration solutions.

All BitPay plans include access to the BitPay POS app Quick Checkout for Web (available from the merchant dashboard) and BitPay Checkout, which both include gratuity functionality and gratuity reports (similar to those available with credit card processing). Our online Quick Checkout for Web and BitPay Checkout app are compatible with all web-enabled smartphones and mobile devices and can be used as a simple, no-cost extension to existing POS systems.

Watch our FAQ video for instructions on how to accept in-person payments with BitPay

This message means that you have generated too many invoices in a short period of time. If it happens again, please wait a few minutes and try again.

You can also log in to the BitPay card dashboard at https://bitpay.com/card/login and complete your top up there if you are being rate limited in the app.

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The BitPay Visa Prepaid Card is issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank, member FDIC, pursuant to a license from Visa, U.S.A. Inc. Metropolitan and Metropolitan Commercial Bank are registered trademarks of Metropolitan Commercial Bank 2014. Use of the Card is subject to the terms and conditions of the applicable Cardholder Agreement and fee schedule, if any.

You can order a replacement card directly by calling our team at the number on the back of your card. If you can no longer access your card, please submit a request to our team. Your new card will arrive within 7-10 business days.

A $9.95 replacement card fee will be charged against your card balance. If you need expedited delivery for your replacement card, you will pay a $25 expedited shipping fee.

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The BitPay Visa Prepaid Card is issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank, member FDIC, pursuant to a license from Visa, U.S.A. Inc. Metropolitan and Metropolitan Commercial Bank are registered trademarks of Metropolitan Commercial Bank 2014. Use of the Card is subject to the terms and conditions of the applicable Cardholder Agreement and fee schedule, if any.

For security and fraud prevention reasons, we require that buyers paying invoices above $3000 and requesting refunds of $1000 or more complete our BitPay ID one-time verification process.

This will take you through a quick process of providing identity verification information such as a Social Security number (or passport number for non-US residents) and a picture or scan of a photo ID.

If you have already completed the verification process, all you need to do is sign into your account.

For more information about the process and what documents are accepted, please refer to What is BitPay ID verification? What documents are accepted?

Questions for our Customer Success Team? Reach out to us here.

The BitPay wallet app is an officially-supported BitPay distribution of the Copay project. By providing the BitPay wallet app, we're able to more tightly integrate BitPay-powered services into the wallet experience while still allowing the Copay project to remain true to its open source nature.

What's in the future for Copay and the BitPay wallet app?

We'll continue to release Copay for all platforms, and the Copay project will continue to be the primary "development head" for the BitPay wallet app. We're excited to continue developing Copay to be the world's most powerful and open bitcoin wallet platform, while making the BitPay app the best way to secure, spend, and manage your bitcoin.

How is the BitPay wallet app different from Copay?

At BitPay, we've made the decision to keep Copay a pure wallet and remove any functionality not related to sending, receiving, or storing assets. As a result of this, we removed functionality to buy Gift Cards in the Copay app. The BitPay wallet still has full gift card support. You can download the most recent version of BitPay wallet from the app store of your choice.

Prior to the removal of gift cards from Copay, the primary difference between BitPay and Copay was the BitPay app's integration with the BitPay Card. The BitPay Card is a prepaid Visa debit card which you can securely pair, manage, and load through the BitPay app. For people living on bitcoin, this makes the BitPay wallet app a great interface for managing both traditional finances and bitcoin spending/savings wallets.

For more information on why we launched the BitPay app, check out the announcement blog post.

The BitPay Card is issued in the United States by Metropolitan Commercial Bank and is available and supported in all 50 US states.

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The BitPay Visa Prepaid Card is issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank, member FDIC, pursuant to a license from Visa, U.S.A. Inc. Metropolitan and Metropolitan Commercial Bank are registered trademarks of Metropolitan Commercial Bank 2014. Use of the Card is subject to the terms and conditions of the applicable Cardholder Agreement and fee schedule, if any.

If you received an ID verification error: Please submit a request to our team and we'll walk you through the process of correcting your application.In the event that you cannot pass the KYC process, wewill be happy to issue an order fee refund to you.If you received a debit card application error: This means that a system error has prevented your application from being processed. You will be notified via email when our Card Services team has successfully re-submitted your application, or if further action is required on your behalf.

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The BitPay Visa Prepaid Card is issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank, member FDIC, pursuant to a license from Visa, U.S.A. Inc. Metropolitan and Metropolitan Commercial Bank are registered trademarks of Metropolitan Commercial Bank 2014. Use of the Card is subject to the terms and conditions of the applicable Cardholder Agreement and fee schedule, if any.

Since the BitPay Prepaid Visa Card is a reloadable prepaid debit card, it is subject to standard US banking law. You will need to provide the following information to help us verify your identity:

Full Name

Address of Residence (No PO Boxes)

Date of Birth

Phone Number

Social Security Number

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The BitPay Visa Prepaid Card is issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank, member FDIC, pursuant to a license from Visa, U.S.A. Inc. Metropolitan and Metropolitan Commercial Bank are registered trademarks of Metropolitan Commercial Bank 2014. Use of the Card is subject to the terms and conditions of the applicable Cardholder Agreement and fee schedule, if any.

You'll receive your BitPay Card via US Mail in 7-10 business days from the date of a successful application. If you haven't received your card after 10 full business days, please submit a request to get in contact with our team.

Confirm that your BitPay Card has shipped here: https://bitpay.com/card/card-status

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The BitPay Visa Prepaid Card is issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank, member FDIC, pursuant to a license from Visa, U.S.A. Inc. Metropolitan and Metropolitan Commercial Bank are registered trademarks of Metropolitan Commercial Bank 2014. Use of the Card is subject to the terms and conditions of the applicable Cardholder Agreement and fee schedule, if any.

After you load funds to your BitPay Card, the value will remain in US dollars. Cryptocurrency is converted to US dollars when it is sent to BitPay for loading the card, so it cannot be returned to your wallet.

The cryptocurrency balance within your BitPay Wallet (and its estimate in USD) is not loaded to the card until you load it via paying a BitPay invoice. Only funds loaded to the card are locked in as USD. How do I add funds to my BitPay Card?

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The BitPay Visa Prepaid Card is issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank, member FDIC, pursuant to a license from Visa, U.S.A. Inc. Metropolitan and Metropolitan Commercial Bank are registered trademarks of Metropolitan Commercial Bank 2014. Use of the Card is subject to the terms and conditions of the applicable Cardholder Agreement and fee schedule, if any.

To protect your privacy, the BitPay App generates new addresses for your wallet automatically after you use a bitcoin (or bitcoin cash) address one time.

All bitcoin and bitcoin cash transactions are public, traceable, and permanently stored in the blockchain. For these reasons, bitcoin and bitcoin cash addresses should only be used one time and users should not disclose their addresses. When addresses are re-used, they allow others to more easily and reliably determine that the address being used is yours.

Commonly-asked Questions

Q: Do my addresses expire?

A: No, old or previously-used addresses never expire.

Q: I have received funds in my "old" address and generated a new one. Will I receive my funds?

A: Yes. When funds are sent to an address, they will be received in that destination address. Generating new addresses in your wallet does not affect transactions to old addresses.

Q: I cannot generate more addresses. I get an error saying Empty addresses limit reached. New addresses cannot be generated."

A: To facilitate scanning funds, the app prevents the user from creating more than twenty empty addresses. Until you use the latest address created, you will not be able to generate new addresses.

Q: How many addresses can my wallet generate?

A: Your wallet is able to generate infinite addresses. However, you may only have twenty empty addresses at one time.

BitPay Wallet users can buy gift cards with their wallet funds in-app for multiple major brands such as Uber, Delta, and Amazon. See our announcement blog post.

Please note that an email address is required to purchase gift cards. To enable email notifications in your BitPay App, tap on the settings icon on top right of app home page. Then tap Notifications and then tap Enable email notifications. Enter an email address for notifications about payments in your wallet.

To purchase a gift card from within the BitPay App:

Open your BitPay App.

Scroll down to under Buy Gift Cards and tap on Shop Now.

Select desired gift card.

Enter desired amount.

Select which wallet to use to purchase gift card.

Slide to confirm transaction.

Please refer to the Gift Card terms within the BitPay Wallet Terms of Use.

BitPay does not have a phone number and does not provide phone support. If someone calls you claiming to be BitPay, or if you find a phone number online claiming to be BitPay, then you can assume that they are attempting to scam you.

US-based BitPay cardholders can contact our card partner's cardholder services team by calling the number only found on the back of their BitPay Cards. The cardholder services team is only able to assist BitPay Card customers with issues such as identity verification, lost or stolen cards, fraudulent or declined card transactions, and ordering replacement cards. They cannot help with issues such as payments to BitPay invoices.

BitPay only provides customer support via the help form or email. Please submit all support requests via BitPay's help form.

The BitPay Visa Prepaid Card is issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank, member FDIC, pursuant to a license from Visa, U.S.A. Inc. Metropolitan and Metropolitan Commercial Bank are registered trademarks of Metropolitan Commercial Bank 2014. Use of the Card is subject to the terms and conditions of the applicable Cardholder Agreement and fee schedule, if any.

You might discover that the process of paying a BitPay invoice with Ethereum differs from paying an invoice with Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash.

While Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash require payment protocol, there is another option with Ethereum; the smart contract. To send these smart contracts, you can use a web or DApp (decentralized application) browser.

A DApp browser has the extension/wallet built-in, while a normal desktop browser does not have a wallet by default. For web browsers, you will need to download an extension. Onceyou'vesuccessfully downloaded the wallet, your web browser will work like a DApp browser.

BitPay ETH invoices are smart contract supported, meaning you should be able to use any ETH wallet with a DApp browser.

To pay a BitPay invoice with a DApp browser wallet:

Click the QR code on the invoice to copy the link to the invoice.

Then paste the invoice URL into the DApp browser.

The invoice should load within your ETH wallet's browser.

Click Confirm. This will initiate the smart contract within your wallet.

When the transaction posts to the blockchain, the invoice will show as completed.

The steps to pay the invoice will differ between wallets. Generally, you are looking to approve the transaction within the wallet once the invoice has been opened in the DApp browser.

Please review the below screenshots for each browser. If you have questions, contact our support team.

Web browser with extension (MetaMask)

1.

2.

DApp browser (Trust Wallet)

1.

2.

DApp browser (Coinbase Wallet)

1.

2.

Once your card arrives follow steps below to activate your card:

Go to bitpay.com/visa/activate

Provide your card number, expiration date, and the 3-digit CVV number located on the back of your card.

You'll then receive an email from [email protected] with instructions on setting up your BitPay cardholder account.

Be sure to immediately sign your card when you receive it to prevent fraudulent and unauthorized payments.

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The BitPay Visa Prepaid Card is issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank, member FDIC, pursuant to a license from Visa, U.S.A. Inc. Metropolitan and Metropolitan Commercial Bank are registered trademarks of Metropolitan Commercial Bank 2014. Use of the Card is subject to the terms and conditions of the applicable Cardholder Agreement and fee schedule, if any.

Starting in version 6.0.0, the BitPay App lets users create multiple wallets which share the same recovery phrase. This new feature simplifies the wallets recovery and portability. However, as a result of this change, the wallet creation process has slightly changed.

Before proceeding, make sure to backup your 12 word recovery phrase. You will not be able to receive any funds until you do. If you lose your 12 word phrase, you will lose access to your funds.

How to create a new wallet

To create a wallet within a new installation of the BitPay App:

Open the BitPay App.

Click Get Started.

Keep enabled the currencies (BTC, etc.) you want to create wallets for.

Click CREATE.

When prompted to protect the wallet with a password, choose the desired option. If you choose not to use a password, you can set up a password later in the wallets settings. If you choose to set a password, you must remember that password. I forgot my wallet's encrypted password. What can I do?

I forgot my wallet's encrypted password. What can I do?

If you already have one or more keys (one or more sets of wallets with a single seed phrase):

Open the BitPay App.

Click the gear icon in the top-right corner.

Under Keys select the key.

Click + Create a new wallet.

Click Simple Wallet. ( What is a multisig wallet? )

Select the currency.

Enter a wallet name.

Click CREATE.

If you want to create a wallet under a new key:

In version 6.0.0 of the BitPay and Copay wallets, BitPay introduced the ability to create many wallets that use the same recovery phrase. Users may also create more than one key within the app. This means you can have multiple sets of wallets, with each set under the same private key and recovery phrase.

To create a new wallet within a new key, follow these steps:

Open the BitPay App.

Click the gear icon in the upper right corner.

Under Keys click Create New Key.

Click Simple Wallet. ( What is a multisig wallet? )

Disable the currencies you do not want to use.

Click CREATE.

When prompted to protect the wallet with a password, choose the desired option. If you choose not to use a password, you can set up a password later in the wallets settings. If you choose to set a password, you must remember that password.

Processing Fee

BitPay charges a 1% processing fee to BitPay merchants. Merchants may choose to pass this fee on to the buyer.

Fees for Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash BitPay Invoices

Miner Fees

Payment Protocol payments require that you send an appropriate miner fee with your payment. Miner fees are given to the miner that appends the transaction to the blockchain. These miner fees are not BitPay fees. The miner fees increase the likelihood that your transaction will confirm more quickly.

A simple way to ensure that any transaction includes an appropriate fee is to adjust your wallet settings to include a dynamically-calculated fee. The BitPay Wallet includes this setting option, which will help ensure that your transaction confirms, even in times of high network traffic.

Network Cost

When you pay a BitPay invoice, your payment goes to a BitPay address. We pay network-based miner fees (just like you pay to send BTC or BCH) to move invoice payments to combine them for processing in something called a "UTXO sweep" (Unspent Transaction Output sweep).

See our answers to frequently-asked questions about Network Cost.

Miner fees are variable costs for BitPay based on network conditions. This means the Network Cost fee also changes to reflect network conditions. Read our original post about why we introduced the Network Cost in February 2017.

BitPay uses this fee for the UTXO sweep, so it is not returned with refunds.

Need more info on BitPay's fees for purchasers? View our Terms of Use section 8.2.2.

Refund Miner Fee Cost

If you underpay or overpay a BitPay invoice and initiate a refund to yourself, BitPay will deduct the miner fee cost of returning the payment from the total refund amount you receive.

If a BitPay merchant issues a full refund to a customer, BitPay will deduct the miner fee amount from the merchants ledger balance. The deduction will be a separate entry in the merchants BitPay ledger after we execute the refund. You will receive the full amount of the refund requested.

Ethereum-Specific Fees for BitPay Invoices

Gas

Gas (or gas fee) is the cost in gwei associated with each operation required to complete Ethereum transactions. Gas fees are estimated based on network congestion of the most recent block. Gas fees are similar to bitcoin miner fees. The gas fee equals the gas price multiplied by the gas limit (gas fee = price * limit).

Gas Limit

Your gas limit is the maximum amount (in units of gas) you are willing to spend to complete the transaction.

Gas Price

The gas price is the amount you are willing to spend on each unit of gas (in gwei). You can speed up a transaction by choosing a higher gas price before sending.

What is a multisig wallet?

When you want to send funds from your wallet, a transaction is created and signed. By signing the transaction, you are digitally saying: I am the owner of the funds, I have the key to manage them, and I approve this transaction.

Single signature (also known as basic) cryptocurrency wallets need one signature to sign a transaction. Multisig is the shortened name for multi-signature, and, as the name indicates, this kind of wallet requires one or more signatures to sign a transaction.

A multisig wallet is a wallet shared by two or more users called copayers. Depending on the kind of wallet, the number of signatures required to sign a transaction will be lower or equal to the number of copayers of the wallet.

For example, a 3-3 wallet is a multisig wallet that is shared by three people and requires three signatures to sign a transaction. A 2-3 wallet is a multisig wallet that is shared by three people and requires two signatures to sign a transaction. You may also see 2 of 3 to indicate the number of copayers needed.

What are the features of multisig wallets?

All the copayers can see the funds and transactions of the wallet.

Requires one or more copayers to sign a transaction to send funds from the wallet. This feature adds security to your funds.

A unique recovery phrase for each of the copayers who share the wallet. However, if one of the copayers recovery phrases is lost, there may no longer be enough copayers to sign transactions. Without enough copayers to sign transactions, you will not be able to spend the wallets funds.

How does a multisig wallet work?

To move funds, every wallet requires the user broadcasting the payment to sign the transaction. Multisig wallets also require one or more copayers to sign the transaction.

For example, with a 2-2 wallet Copayer A wants to send funds. When they try to move funds, the wallet creates a transaction proposal that is only signed by Copayer A. Sending the funds requires both Copayer A and Copayer B to sign the transaction. Until Copayer B approves the transaction, the funds stay in the wallet. When Copayer B approves the proposal, their wallet signs the transaction. Signing the transaction broadcasts it to the network and sends the funds.

The transaction proposal does not expire- there is no time limit to approve a transaction proposal. There is no copayer hierarchy. This means that any copayer can create a transaction proposal, and all the copayers can sign the transaction proposal.

A 2-3 wallet requires two copayers to sign a transaction (out of three copayers total). Copayer A creates the transaction proposal. Either of the remaining copayers (Copayer B or Copayer C) can approve the transaction proposal. A 2-3 wallet has three copayers but requires only two signatures.

How do I create a multisig wallet in the BitPay App?

To create a multisig wallet, open the BitPay App and follow these steps:

Click the gear icon in the upper right corner.

Within Keys, select the key where you will create the wallet.

Click + Create a new wallet.

Select Shared wallet.

Select the currency, either Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash. (Note: Ethereum does not support multisig.)

Enter the wallet name.

Enter your name (this will be your copayer name).

Select the number of copayers.

Select the number of required signatures.

Click CREATE.

Share the address/QR code with the other devices joining the wallet.

Recovery

Each copayer has their own recovery phrase. On wallets where the number of copayers is the same as the number of signatures required (e.g., 2-2, 3-3), to recover the funds you will need the recovery phrase of all copayers.

For example:

A 1-2 wallet requires one signature. Therefore, it requires one recovery phrase to move its funds.

A 2-2 wallet requires two signatures to sign a transaction. Therefore, it requires each of the two recovery phrases to move the funds out of the wallet.

To recover a multisig wallet, the number of recovery phrases needed is equal to the number of signatures required by the wallet. If recovery phrases are lost, then effectively the number of copayers is reduced. For example, if you have a 2-5 wallet but 1 copayer loses their recovery phrase, effectively the wallet is now a 2-4 wallet. The wallet still remains a 2-5 wallet unless the copayers move the funds to a new wallet. If a copayer loses their wallet, we recommend creating a new shared wallet and moving the funds to this new wallet.

To recover a multisig wallet, import each of the recovery phrases on a different device.

Can I be scammed with a multisig wallet?

Yes, attackers can use a multisig wallet to deceive the victim.

The scam works like this:

The victim purchases cryptocurrency, likely for a too good to be true price.

The funds are sent to a multisig wallet that the victim does not own but has access. For example, the attacker may set up a 1-2 multisig wallet that lets the attacker move the funds without the victim's consent.

The attackers move the funds to a different wallet - one which the victim does not have access to.

Our recommendations:

- If you are purchasing crypto, please make sure the wallet you are going to receive the funds in is a wallet that you own, a wallet that you have created that is not a multisig wallet and only you have access to it.

- If you are purchasing crypto, beware of too good to be true pricing or someone offering cryptocurrency at a much lower price than the current rate.

If someone tells you to create or join a multisig wallet to send you money, they are trying to scam you.

Q&A

Q: I want to add security to my funds, is a multisig wallet a good option?

A: As a multisig wallet requires more signatures to sign a transaction, it adds security to your wallet. If an attacker obtained one copayers device, they would not be able to spend your wallets funds if you require at least two signatures. However, keep in mind the following:

Every time you want to sign a transaction, it has to be signed by the required number of copayers.

To recover the wallet, you need multiple recovery phrases.

Q: I want to share a wallet with my spouse, what do you recommend?

A: There are many multisig configurations for two copayers:

1-2: Only one signature is required to sign a transaction. Neither of the copayers need another to sign a proposal. The wallet can be recovered with one recovery phrase.

2-2: Two signatures are required to send a transaction. Every time a copayer creates a transaction proposal, they must wait for the other copayer to approve the proposal. This wallet configuration requires two recovery phrases to recover the wallet. If one device was lost or stolen and you do not have that copayers recovery phrase, the wallet and funds are lost.

2-3: Three copayers, two signatures are required. With an extra recovery phrase safely stored separately, this wallet configuration arises as a good solution when there is a risk of losing one of the devices. 2-4 could be a good option as well.

Q: I have a 2-2 wallet. The other copayer has lost their device and does not have their recovery phrase. How can we recover the wallet?

A: Unfortunately, there is no way to recover the wallet in this case. Both recovery phrases are required to recover the wallet.

Q: I have a 2-2 wallet. The other copayer has lost their device and does not have their recovery phrase, but I have my wallet set up in two devices. Why am I not able to move funds?

A: Each copayer has a different and unique signature that has to be provided in order to move funds. This means that duplicating the same copayer wallet on many devices does not help as they provide the same signature. If you lose any recovery phrase for a multisig wallet in which you need every signature (such as 2-2), you lose access to the funds in the wallet.

Q: Do I pay a higher fee by using a multisig wallet to send funds?

A: Yes. The scripting is different and there are more signatures included in the transaction. These two factors result in a larger transaction (in bytes), which requires a higher total fee.