BitPay Inc.: The company was incorporated in May, 2011. It is a payment service provider for Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash. The founders of the company are Tony Gallippi and Stephen Pair. They started their headquarters in Orlando, FL.

The company came about in 2011 when the founders saw the potential of bitcoin as a way to revolutionize the financial industry making it safer, cheaper, and easier to send, receive and store money. By making payments safer by "completely eliminating" the fraud that exists in credit cards payments. Bitcoin eliminates the intermediaries that can increase transaction costs for the consumers like payment gateways. The founders see bitcoin as a way for businesses and consumers to take more control and ownership of money. They wanted to change the way the world does payments and how businesses interact in a more seamless and cost efficient process for sending and receiving bitcoin.

The company was funded from multiple sources of investors. People like Shakil Khan, Barry, Silbert, Jimmy Furland, Roger Ver, and Trace Mayer. In early 2013, after they made an announcement that they will move their headquarters in Atlanta, GA, they received $510 thousand dollars from angel investors. In mid-summer 2013, BitPay received $2 million from a venture capital firm based in San Francisco called the Founders Fund. This firm has a portfolio of firms that provided funding for such as Airbnb, Spotify, Stripe, and Oscar Health. The Founder Fund was formed in 2005 and was organized by Peter Theil, Ken Howery, and Luke Nosek.

In December of 2013, Bitcoin received another $2.7 million fund from Hong Kong business magistrate, Li Ka-Shing who funded the money through a ventrue capital firm called Horizons Venture Limited. This firm focused on "disruptive and technology focus startups" such as, but not limited to, BitPay, Siri that was later purchased by Apple, Deepmind that was also later purchased by Google, and Meta. Li Ka-Shing is currently the 30th richest man in the world.

In May 2014, Bitpay received additional funding of $30 million from multiple investors such as, but not limited to, Index Ventrues, Jerry Yang, the founder of Yahoo, and Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Group.

Business Activities:

The problem BitPay is trying to solve is payment complications that exist in traditional banking and payment processing companies such as fraud issues, long time frame to send and receive payments, expensive intermediary payment processing fees that are more expensive compared to merchant services, wire transfers, and credit card payments. Knowing that bitcoin is a new form of currency that is not tied to a specific type of currency like US Dollar, Euro, etc. Allows businesses and consumers to own their own money and have full control of what they can do with it. When bitcoin came in its early stages, the founders wanted to create a platform for consumers and businesses to engage in a seamless and user-friendly way to exchange bitcoin for goods and services.

BitPay's intended customers are any individual and business, banks, and financial institutions that possess or would like to start accepting Bitcoin as means for payment. According to market share analysis from enlyst.com, the top three industries that use BitPay are Hospital and Health Care, Marketing and Advertising, and Non-Profit Organizations. 51% of BitPay customers are in the United States followed by the United Kingdom at 3% and the rest spread out in different countries around the world. They provide a means to exchange customers' cryptocurrency into dollars and vice versa so that it can provide the flexibility for their customers to use their money wherever they go. As revolutionary as BitPay is being the largest Bitcoin payment processor in the world, the market size is based on online payments is only 0.1%. Authorize.net is the leading online payment processing company that has a market share of a little over 25%, followed by Adyen, Apple Pay, Log-and-Pay with Amazon, and Vanco-Payment Solutions.

The top competitors of BitPay, when it comes to cryptocurrency exchange, are Coin payments, Coin base, and Go Coin. Although these companies offer similar benefits for their customers, such as a low 1% transaction fee for all payments, there are differences in payment processing services. According to cryptocolumn.com, "Bitpay is the most affordable Bitcoin processor around. Many of their options are zero transaction fees with zero hidden charges." Since the inception of BitPay in 2011, it has never been hacked providing peace of mind to its clients. It also offers a Bitcoin debit card that helps individual clients access their crypto currency anywhere that accepts VISA and provides competitive and guaranteed exchange rates for crypto to the accepted currency. For merchants who accept bitcoin as payment, BitPay offers daily bank settlements and flat rate pricing. Daily bank settlements are reports that the last bank receives the report of transaction(s) from two entities.

1. Which technologies are they currently using, and how are they implementing them?

2. How did the idea for the company (or project) come about?

3. How is the company funded? Is there a role of IT in funding? If yes explain if not can you suggest any?

4. What specific financial problem is the company or project trying to solve? Can you suggest solutions from Information systems perspectives?