AltcoinsGoCoin joins Coinbase and BitPay as the last Bitcoin payment processor in the e-commerce platform Shopify. Unlike Coinbase and BitPay, however, GoCoin will enable merchants to make Litecoin and Dogecoin payments in addition to Bitcoin.
Eric Benz, Business Development Advisor at GoCoin said the deal was closed months ago and was ultimately only signed because merchants like GAW Miners asked for Altcoin payment solutions.
Benz explained to Bitcoin news:
“At the beginning of our negotiations Shopify was reluctant…but a lot of the dealers we already work with are also represented on the Bitcoin news platform…they were the driving force that sealed the deal in the end.
Louis Kearns, Product Manager at Shopify, confirmed that the demand for Altcoins (Litecoin & Dogecoin) from merchants was the driving force behind the decision to partner with GoCoin in addition to the two existing payment processors.
“GoCoin offers Bitcoin and other Altcoins for payment processing. The demand for Altcoin payments was very high and the integration of GoCoin went quickly and smoothly thanks to the Gateway API,” said Kearns.
Focus on men’s toys
With the integration, the GoCoin payment method will be activated for more than 120,000 merchants on the Shopify platform. The list of resellers active on the platform includes companies such as General Electric and Tesla Motors.
Benz says that a pilot program to test the GoCoin integration has already caused a jump in payment volumes at some dealers. GoCoin had worked with a number of companies, preferably Miner for crypto currencies, prior to the Shopify integration. They were also involved in the 8-week trial period. The payment volume of the companies more than tripled during the time on the Shopify platform.
In order to promote integration on the Shopify platform, GoCoin will focus on Shopify merchants who are in the mining or technically savvy industry.
“Our focus is on miners, electrical goods and ‘men’s toys’,” says Benz.
In order to attract some attention, there will also be some special promotions in the near future.
Victory of the Bitcoin formula
Benz sees the new partnership as a clear victory for the Bitcoin formula market and a signal that GoCoin is well on the way to establishing itself as a serious payment processor like in this review.
“This is a big step for the Altcoin market and we are very proud of it… It shows that we want to compete with the biggest names in the business. So far there are only three payment processors on Shopify and we are one of them.”
Kearns told CoinDesk in an interview that Shopify has already processed tens of thousands of Bitcoin transactions from thousands of merchants.
The company welcomes the new payment methods and added:
“We always have an eye for new technologies that help our customers. The partnership with GoCoin now allows our customers to use different crypto currencies”.
Just last week, GoCoin announced a partnership with Cozy Games. Cozy Games is a regulated online gaming platform where customers can now also pay in Bitcoin and Litecoin.