The price of Bitcoin is rising again, thanks to a series of high-profile recommendations from Tesla co-founders Elon Musk, Morgan Stanley, and Deutsche Bank. If you’ve invested some money in cryptocurrency for a while, you’re probably sitting on a healthy profit right now. But other than fervently checking the price of Bitcoin to determine your profit, there isn’t much you can do with it. So far it has been.
Thanks to an update from BitPay, iPhone owners can now use their cryptocurrency to pay at the checkout. The latter, which claims to be the largest provider of cryptocurrency payment services, is offering a prepaid Mastercard that can now be added to Apple Pay for in-store and online checkout spending.
Of course, in order to spend money in the business, you will need to convert your Bitcoin to an accepted currency such as US dollars or Great British Pounds. Some online merchants accept payments in Bitcoin so you don’t have to convert them. However, if you are picking up a pint of milk at your local grocery store, you will likely need a quick conversion in the checkout line.
Most places accept Mastercard, so you shouldn’t have a problem with the card not working with contactless terminals.
Since Apple Pay works on an iPhone and Apple Watch, you can search your bitcoin stash to pay with one of these devices with a tap of your finger. And if you’re not currently in the Apple ecosystem, BitPay hasn’t forgotten you. The company plans to add the Mastercard to a number of other contactless payment solutions, including Google Pay and Samsung Pay, by the end of March 2021. So stay tuned.
While Bitcoin is the best known (and most successful at the time of writing) cryptocurrency, it is not the only digital currency that BitPay supports. Customers with the Mastardcard added to Apple Pay can also pay with Ether, Bitcoin Cash, USD Coin, Gemini Dollar, Paxos Standard and Binance USD on their account.
Unfortunately, DogeCoin – the popular cryptocurrency invented by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer and based on the adorable face of the Shiba Inu dog from the “Doge” memes – is not currently supported.
“We have thousands of BitPay wallet app customers using the BitPay card,” announced Stephen Pair, CEO of BitPay. “With the addition of Apple Pay, and soon Google and Samsung Pay, it’s easy and convenient to use the BitPay card in more places, from everyday items to luxury purchases.”
