900% increase in Bitcoin merchants
BitPay has announced the approval of its 10,000th merchant while at this time last year the company had just reached 1,000 merchants. That’s an increase of 900% for the leading payment processor.
While BitPay is only one option available to merchants it is the largest Bitcoin payment processor and these numbers give a glimpse into the Bitcoin economy.
BitPay’s merchants are still largely ecommerce, 90%+, but they have experienced increased growth in non-US merchants. Earlier this year 40% of BitPays merchants were located outside the US, however these latest numbers show a 10% increase to 50% of customers based outside North America.
In line with the growth in merchants, the volume of Bitcoin sales through the business has also had a dramatic increase. “The month of August was another record month for BitPay, processing over 10,000 merchant transactions worth over $6.4 million. Year-to-date in 2013, over $34 million worth of bitcoins have been spent on goods and services through merchants using BitPay’s platform.”
The Bitcoin economy may be small, but it’s growing rapidly!
