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We hope you are as excited as we are. Bitcoin Cash will give your customers a new way to pay at BitPay checkout. You will be able to do business with a passionate new population of cryptocurrency users.
Before this feature goes live this week, we wanted to send you some specifics about what this will mean for your business.
Two ways to pay
Your customers will be able to pay with two currencies at checkout: Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH). These two blockchains have differing exchange rates, bitcoin miner fee levels, and confirmation times.
Your customers will be able to do a side by side comparison whenever they make a payment so they can decide which payment method works best for them.
What you need to know
Bitcoin Cash (BCH) will be automatically available as a payment option for your customers. There is nothing you or your developers need to do to enable BCH if you use BitPay's hosted payment, billing, or donation tools or our modal or i-frame invoices. Customers will still be able to pay with Bitcoin (BTC) without interruption.
BitPay API and Webhook Changes
The changes do not include breaking API changes. We deprecated some current fields and added new fields for this launch, but we have not removed any deprecated fields from API responses.
We have added the following new fields to the BitPay API and to BitPay webhooks in preparation for the introduction of Bitcoin Cash:
- transactionCurrency: The cryptocurrency used to pay the invoice. This field will only be available after a transaction is applied to the invoice. Possible values are currently BTC or BCH.
- amountPaid: The total amount paid to the invoice in terms of the invoice "transactionCurrency" indicated in the smallest possible unit for the corresponding transactionCurrency (e.g satoshis for BTC and BCH).
- exchangeRates: Exchange rates keyed by source and target currencies.
- paymentSubtotals: Equivalent of price in terms of the transactionCurrency. This value does not include the minerFees. The key is the currency and the value is an amount indicated in the smallest possible unit for each supported cryptocurrency (e.g satoshis for BTC and BCH).
- paymentTotals: The total amount that the purchaser should pay. This is like "paymentSubtotals" but with the minerFees included. The key is the currency and the value is an amount indicated in the smallest possible unit for each supported cryptocurrency (e.g satoshis for BTC and BCH).
"
btcPrice", "
btcPaid", and "
rate" are not needed to check the status of a payment or to proceed with order fulfilment. Still, if your implementation is currently using the fields "
btcPrice," "
btcPaid" and "
rate", we advise you to instead use the new fields listed above.
BitPay Currency Option Settings
After Bitcoin Cash is live as a BitPay payment option, you will have the option to disable/enable either Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash payments in the BitPay merchant dashboard under
Settings >
Accepted Currencies.
BitPay BCH and BTC Invoice Minimums
The minimum invoice price for Bitcoin Cash (BCH) will be $1. Due to decreased average Bitcoin (BTC) miner fees, we have also reduced the minimum invoice price for BTC to $1. Invoice minimums are subject to change based on changing network conditions and miner fee levels for BTC and BCH. We will let you know if these minimums change in the future.
BCH and Network Cost
Due to the insignificant average size of Bitcoin Cash miner fees, there is currently no network cost included on Bitcoin Cash invoices. If Bitcoin Cash miner fees increase to a significant level, network cost will be included in Bitcoin Cash invoice totals by default.
What's next
We can't wait for you to get this new feature. Our team has put in a lot of work to make it possible for BitPay merchants to accept Bitcoin Cash, and we look forward to your feedback.
Best,
The BitPay Team
