Bitcoin has powerful benefits for online payments. But there are always challenges with introducing a big change in how payments work. Bitcoin has been no exception. It's our goal to make this new form of payment secure, seamless, and reliable for businesses and their customers.

In 2014, we took a major step toward that goal by adopting the Bitcoin Payment Protocol on all BitPay invoices and in BitPay's wallet platform. We are now beginning the work to require Payment Protocol wallet payments for all BitPay invoices.

What is the problem?

If you have used Bitcoin before, you've noticed that it's possible to make mistakes that don't happen with other online payments. You can send too much or too little bitcoin. You can send bitcoin to the wrong bitcoin address. You can send a bitcoin payment with a bitcoin miner fee that is too small, causing your payment to take days to confirm.

We answer thousands of customer support requests every month, and we see first-hand how these problems affect BitPay merchants and their customers. Correcting these mistakes by sending refunds back to customers is a bad solution. It costs customers time and money, and it costs merchants successful orders.

With the rising cost of bitcoin miner fees, refunds are also often costly to send. Customers with mistaken payments only receive partial refunds of the BTC they sent because of miner fee costs. One customer of a BitPay merchant recently spent 0.003853 BTC on a payment which was mistakenly underpaid by a small amount. They were only able to receive a refund of 0.002247 BTC. This is not the experience we want bitcoin users to have.

In some cases, the miner fees required to send a refund are higher than the refundable amount. This means that customers can send funds and receive neither their order nor a refund. BitPay can’t even access these funds. They are unspendable.

While BitPay does not control bitcoin miner fee levels, we can take steps to reduce the risk of mistaken payments for our merchants and their customers.

Why is payment protocol the solution?

Payment Protocol eliminates user error in bitcoin payments.

When a Payment Protocol wallet interacts with a Payment Protocol URL, it creates an SSL-secured connection to the true owner of the receiving bitcoin address (in this case, BitPay).

Instead of copying and pasting a bitcoin address and entering any BTC amount, customers simply click or copy/paste a payment protocol URL on a BitPay invoice. If their wallet also "speaks" Payment Protocol, the correct receiving bitcoin address and the correct sending amount are locked in automatically.

If a user tries to send an incorrect payment amount, or if the wallet sending the payment doesn't "speak" payment protocol, BitPay's servers will reject and not broadcast the transaction.

We can also analyze transactions to make sure an adequate bitcoin miner fee is included. If the fee isn't sufficient to allow the transaction to confirm on the bitcoin network on time, BitPay can return a helpful message back to the wallet to let the user know. Mistaken payments will never reach the Bitcoin network.

No funds move unless they're secure and successful. By preventing mistaken payments from ever being broadcast, the Payment Protocol reduces unnecessary Bitcoin network congestion. Most importantly, it will save bitcoin users the cost of bitcoin miner fees for payments that don’t succeed.

What will this mean for BitPay merchants?

BitPay merchants can expect fewer payment support issues and better customer experiences. Even better, this Payment Protocol standard for BitPay invoices will require no technical change from BitPay merchants. Payment protocol has been working as a payment option on BitPay invoices since 2014.

Some of your customers are not using Payment Protocol-compatible wallets. As we deploy this change, we will be working with them so they can easily migrate to compatible payment solutions.

We will be sending more information and advance notification to merchants like you before we roll this change out to all BitPay invoices.

What will this change if I'm paying a BitPay merchant?

If you are using the BitPay, Copay, Mycelium, or Electrum wallets for your bitcoin payments, nothing will change. These true bitcoin wallets all already "speak" Payment Protocol. If you are using a non-Payment Protocol wallet or service to pay BitPay invoices, you will need to move your spending bitcoin to a wallet or service which can support Payment Protocol. We strongly recommend that you use a true bitcoin wallet for spending to avoid delayed transactions, but you will be able to use any service compatible with Payment Protocol.

You can already start sending payment protocol payments today. Learn more about how to pay from a payment protocol wallet.

What's next?

In the coming months, we will be working with the top wallets and exchanges in the bitcoin space to advance this adoption of Payment Protocol. We will move as quickly as possible toward full adoption and full rollout of Payment Protocol-only payments for all BitPay invoices.

The Payment Protocol implementation which BitPay invoices will support is detailed in Bitcoin Improvement Proposals 70, 71, and 72. However, we recommend that wallets take an additional step and not broadcast payments rejected via the Bitcoin Payment Protocol.

We want to work together with our industry to solve the problem of secure, reliable payment experiences for bitcoin users. This is something which is essential for our customers, so if necessary, we will carry this forward alone. But we believe that if we work together, the entire Bitcoin ecosystem will be better prepared to provide scalable, user-friendly internet payments for a world that needs the Bitcoin alternative.

Subscribe to the BitPay blog for more updates as we move toward our goal.

BitPay and Copay will continue to be available on all major desktop and mobile platforms. You can easily retrieve your wallet backup phrase and import your Chrome Copay wallet into a BitPay or Copay wallet on another platform.

Unfortunately, the demise of Chrome apps also affects specific features some of you rely on.

Our hardware wallet integrations with TREZOR and Ledger are only available in the Copay Chrome app. With Google's decision, starting in 2018, TREZOR and Ledger will no longer be available as co-signer devices for Copay multi-signature wallets.

If you have funds in multi-signature Copay wallets which use TREZOR or Ledger devices as co-signers, we recommend that you move your funds to a 1-of-1 wallet on your hardware device, or to a different multi-signature BitPay or Copay wallet. If you're unable to do this before Google retires Chrome apps, you will need import your hardware wallet seed into another BitPay or Copay wallet to move funds in the future.

Two weeks ago we published an advisory for BitPay users about Segwit2x, a planned change to the Bitcoin protocol. This protocol change would have caused temporary Bitcoin network disruptions which would have affected BitPay and Copay users this week.

To protect our users, we had planned to temporarily suspend payment acceptance, payment disbursement, and debit card reloads.

In the past week, the Segwit2x protocol change has experienced a major dip in support among bitcoin miners. While a small minority of miners are still signalling intent to support Segwit2x, BitPay will continue to follow the main Bitcoin block chain with the most accumulated work.

We now believe that any minority attempt to activate Segwit2x will not threaten disruption of security or service for the main Bitcoin block chain. BitPay no longer plans to suspend payment processing services for our cardholders and merchants. We will continue offering service on the main Bitcoin block chain without interruption.

Additionally, BitPay and Copay wallet users can continue to send and receive payments. The temporary double-spend risk which would have occurred with a successful majority activation of this protocol change is no longer a risk.

We expect no further disruptive Bitcoin protocol changes like this in the near future, but we will continue to notify our users if anything changes.

Thank you for bearing with us as we prepare users like you for Bitcoin's continued evolution. We are continuing our work to create a better payment experience for our merchants and bitcoin users. Expect exciting new work from our team in the months ahead!

The majority of Bitcoin Cash miners are now signaling intent to activate a change to the Bitcoin Cash mining difficulty algorithm. This hard fork is currently estimated to occur on 7:06 PM GMT on November 13, 2017. Learn more about the hard fork's estimated timing.

Our priority with any blockchain protocol change is to ensure continued functionality and security for our users. For the November Bitcoin Cash protocol change, BitPay and Copay wallets will follow the Bitcoin Cash chain with the most accumulated difficulty. With current miner signaling, this means that our wallets will be compatible with the new rules activated by the Bitcoin Cash mining majority.

We don't currently have any reason to think that this hard fork will be contentious or will result in a block chain split for Bitcoin Cash. Users can continue to receive and send Bitcoin Cash transactions from their wallets up to, during, and after the hard fork protocol change.

We want your feedback!

Bitcoin Cash support is new for our wallet, so we appreciate your feedback as we make it better! If you spot any issues in your own use of the app, please report them on our BitPay and Copay issues page.

Bitcoin miners have signaled their intent to deploy a Bitcoin protocol change called Segwit2x. The final portion of this change is scheduled to occur with block 494,784 in mid-November.

At BitPay, our goal is to provide our customers with the best possible digital payments services. The safety and security of our users is always our top priority. In some cases, protocol changes increase the risk of using the network. When such events occur, we must take precautions to protect our users.

While most miners signaled their support of this protocol change, not all support it. If miners are divided over this change, there is a significant risk of a chain split. If that occurs, BitPay’s services will follow the chain with the most accumulated difficulty.

We will do our best to continue to provide service on the Bitcoin block chain. Unfortunately, absent any further developments, we must recommend that you stop using Bitcoin prior to block 494,784 (allowing time for your transactions to get into a prior block) and until the uncertainty is resolved. We will suspend payment acceptance, payment disbursement and debit card reloads approximately 24 hours prior to activation of Segwit2x. We are currently communicating with all of our affected users with preparation instructions.

If you have a Bitcoin wallet and use Bitcoin during this period of uncertainty, you should assume that there will be a chain split and that any Bitcoin you send will be included in both chains. In addition, any Bitcoin you receive will be at a higher than normal risk of double spend.

In the event of a prolonged or permanent chain split, if the minority chain has significant market value, we will provide instructions to Copay and BitPay wallet users on how to safely access those coins. We will refer to the minority chain as BC1 (if Segwit2x is the majority) or BC2 (if Segwit2x is the minority). Beyond that, we have no plans to offer our services on the minority chain.

BitPay is committed to building the most comprehensive digital payments platform in this ever changing environment. We will resume full support for the Bitcoin block chain as soon as possible after this event.

Naturally, our next step is to make those transactions easily searchable. We already provide a widely-used block explorer for Bitcoin (BTC) transaction details at insight.bitpay.com. Now if you need to look up Bitcoin Cash (BCH) transactions on the Bitcoin Cash blockchain, you can use our new Insight instance at bch-insight.bitpay.com.

All of Insight's block explorer features are now adapted for Bitcoin Cash users. You'll be able to check block height, transaction inputs, block statistics, transaction miner fees, confirmation status, and more for your Bitcoin Cash payments.

Have feedback on this new block explorer implementation? We went to make Insight better for you. Send us your feature requests and issues!

Since the creation of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) in August, we've received consistent feedback from our users asking us to support it. Bitcoin Cash is a fork of the Bitcoin blockchain which accepts much larger blocks of transactions, intended to provide the Bitcoin network with higher transaction capacity.

With this beta release, we're giving you the freedom to choose – or to use both BCH and BTC.

Creating a Bitcoin Cash Wallet

Want to enable Bitcoin Cash support in a Copay wallet app? Follow these steps.

1. Go to "Settings" tab on your app home screen.
2. Turn on the "Bitcoin Cash Support" switch.
3. Create a new wallet.
4. Select "Chain: BCH".

Done! The new wallet will operate on the Bitcoin Cash network. You can use it just like you would use any other Copay wallet. But be sure to never send BTC to a BCH address or BCH to a BTC address, as this will cause you to lose access to funds.

Getting Access to BCH – Pre-August 1st Wallets

If you had wallets with BTC before the August 1st 2017 hard fork, your BCH-compatible Copay wallet can now access the BCH balance created at the time of the fork. The BCH balance available to you will be equivalent to the BTC balance you had in your wallet at the time of the hard fork.

You can access those BCH balances by clicking on “Scan wallets for BCH” in "Settings" and selecting the appropriate wallets to duplicate. This step will duplicate the old BTC wallet, automatically creating a BCH wallet with the August 1st BCH balance.

New Payment Conventions for Bitcoin Cash

To safeguard our users, we have adopted a few new conventions to ensure users don’t accidentally send BTC to a BCH wallet or vice versa. While we are working with other wallet providers and exchanges to adopt these new conventions, not all services that support Bitcoin Cash have done so. Learn more about these conventions for Bitcoin Cash addresses, URIs, and payment requests.

Get Started with the Copay Bitcoin Cash Beta

Ready to get started? Email us to get access to the iOS beta, or add yourself as a beta tester if you have an Android device.

All you'll need to do is install the update on the same device that hosts your current bitcoin wallet. All of your current wallets will be accessible in the beta.

Remember that Bitcoin Cash wallet support is still in beta, so take care with your BCH funds. Our wallet team is standing by to respond to feedback and bugs.

Your bitcoin wallet is not any different. In a previous post, we showed you how to protect your funds by storing them in a multisignature wallet. Today we're going to show you how to securely back up and protect your wallet's private keys themselves.

Understanding Private Keys and Wallet Backup Phrases

The first time you open the BitPay app and create a new wallet, you will see this screen:

At this point, you'll need to back up your wallet. This means writing down a twelve word backup phrase (like the one shown below) and keeping it safe. It is not secure to take a screenshot or picture of your 12 word backup phrase. Never share your backup phrase with anyone – even BitPay – unless you want them to have access to your money.

These 12 words can be used to regenerate your bitcoin wallet's "private keys". Private keys generate the digital signatures required to spend your bitcoin.

Simply put, a private key is sort of like the password to your email address, except it can't be reset. Since the backup phrase gives a bitcoin wallet access to your private key, you can use the 12-word backup phrase to recover your bitcoin if your device is stolen or damaged.

Backup phrases are a simple, secure way to protect and restore private keys. But this means your bitcoin is only as secure as your backup phrase. You might want to take extra care to secure and protect your backup phrase once you've written it down.

Tips for Private Key and Backup Phrase Security

Before you think about how to secure your bitcoin wallet backup phrase and private keys, count the cost. It’s likely not worth it to spend $1000 to store a backup phrase with $20 worth of bitcoin. But you will probably be alright with spending more time and money on securing the private keys for a large amount of bitcoin.

Here are some ways you can secure your backup phrase and your private keys when you create a bitcoin wallet.

Recording Your Backup Phrase

Be sure to write down your backup phrase on a strong, durable sheet of paper with a quality pen. You can also secure that paper in a protective sleeve. The key is to make sure the ink and paper hold up over time.

Storing Your Backup Phrase

Instead of storing your backup phrase in a physical wallet or box, you may want to store your backup phrase in a fireproof and waterproof safe or lockbox. If you wish to share emergency access to your wallet in case of accident or death, you can entrust multiple copies to trusted friends and family whom you can trust to store the phrase securely.

If you want to take your backup phrase storage to a new level of security, you can keep your backup phrase in a safety deposit box at a bank.

This recommendation comes with several caveats. First, you must be sure that you trust the stability and integrity of the bank. Some banks in countries with unstable financial systems have confiscated the contents of safety deposit boxes in the past. Second, safety deposit boxes can cost at least $60 annually, and you may have to wait for over a year to get access. Finally, the contents of a safety deposit box in the US are not FDIC insured, so there is not a safety net for your bitcoin wealth.

Securing Your Private Keys

Once your backup phrase is secure, you can focus on securing your wallet and your private keys on your device. In case your device is stolen, you don't want the thief to be able to access your bitcoin. There are two things you can do to prevent this.

Using an App PIN

To prevent a thief from accessing your backup phrase through your app, be sure to set a strong PIN lock on your phone. You can also set a PIN specifically for the BitPay app, as shown in the image below on the left. Here are the steps to set a PIN in your app:

Open "Settings" > Select "Lock App" > Select "Lock by PIN" > Enter Your PIN

Note that this method only provides security against non-technically skilled thieves. If thieves can access your smartphone hard drive, a PIN will not prevent them from accessing your private keys.

Using Spending Passwords

Fortunately, the BitPay wallet makes it easy to encrypt private keys with a spending password, as shown in the image above on the right. The wallet will prompt you to enter this password every time you initiate a bitcoin payment, and the password will protect the private keys on your device.

Here are the steps to set a spending password for any of your wallets:

Open "Settings" > Select Wallet > Select "Request Spending Password" > Enter Your Spending Password

Remember that this spending password will not protect your private keys if your backup phrase is lost.

Learn More About Bitcoin Security

Want to learn more about securing your bitcoin? Check out our wallet security page, or browse through our library of wallet help articles.

Want more tips for bitcoin security? Subscribe now to get our blog posts delivered to your inbox.

As the payment method of the Internet, bitcoin can go places and do things which banks and wire transfers can't. Some small and medium-sized businesses are starting to find that out, particularly in their efforts to reach international markets like China.

These countries typically have very restrictive international banking access, or none at all. Wire transfers in and out of developing countries are costly, with multiple intermediary banks taking their own cuts of the payments. These transfer costs are painful for the world's largest businesses, but they make accessing international markets particularly hard for businesses that haven't – yet – cracked the Fortune 500.

Bellatorra Skin Care is one of those companies – a Texas-based cosmetics firm that for years has provided skin-care cosmetics through the US and much of Europe. The company's full product line is available at retail exclusively through Barney's locations in the US, but the company has wholesale deals with cosmetics shops worldwide. One new target? The fast-growing Chinese cosmetics market.

Bellatorra CEO Nathan Halsey previously ran a skin-care company which operated for four years in China. They found roadblocks to growth – namely, they were only able to receive cash transactions from their clients due to cross-border currency exchange limitations.

Ultimately, Halsey's previous company had to shut down its operations in China due to these roadblocks.

When a Chinese cosmetics distributor recently approached Halsey and his current company Bellatorra about using bitcoin to pay for a wholesale shipment, the game changed. Bellatorra and the Chinese wholesaler turned to us to process the six-figure payment.

For Bellatorra and the international supplier, the payment process was simple. Bellatorra created a BitPay account and sent an email bill to the supplier. The supplier sent a bitcoin payment using their bitcoin wallet. The payment processed in minutes and settled to Bellatorra's bank account in the form of US dollars in fewer than 2 business days.

Now Bellatorra is moving to use bitcoin in more transactions, with values processed via BitPay expected to grow by 10X in the near term.

Bitcoin sidesteps many of the problems Bellatorra and other multinational businesses find when doing business in emerging markets. Designed for peer to peer transactions on a global internet, bitcoin makes it possible to send money around the world as fast as sending an email. There aren't multiple intermediaries to deduct multiple fees, and there is none of the paperwork and headache of getting yuan to dollars (or vice versa) via wire transfer.

While bitcoin is a new technology to many businesses, the BitPay platform makes it practical to start accepting bitcoin payments from your clients or resellers without any technical knowledge or integration work. BitPay receives the bitcoin payment and converts it into your own local currency. Then we deposit every dollar or euro you charge (minus only one flat 1% processing fee) to your bank account within one business day, with no risk of bitcoin price volatility or chargeback fraud for you.

For us, Bellatorra's story is not just an anomaly:

While most people are looking for bitcoin acceptance at their local coffee shop, it's in these cross-border B2B payments that bitcoin is having an outsized impact.

Want more stories of how bitcoin is changing payments? Subscribe now to get our blog posts delivered to your inbox.

The good news? The BitPay wallet is already among the most secure true bitcoin wallets available today. You can secure your funds in the app with a spending password or PIN, but the underlying architecture of the wallet lets you take security even further.

Most bitcoin wallet addresses only have one private key that can sign and authorize transactions. If that key is stolen or lost, you won't be the only person that can spend your bitcoin.

One solution lies in multi-signature bitcoin wallets.

What is a Multi-Signature Wallet?

A multi-signature wallet requires several private keys to authorize bitcoin transactions. The multi-signature bitcoin address structure lets you splits those private keys across multiple devices or among multiple people. You choose how many devices or people ("copayers") you will share the wallet with. You also choose how many copayers need to sign off on a transaction.

For example, you can create a multi-signature bitcoin wallet, choose two copayers, and require two private key signatures for every bitcoin transaction. This would mean that both of the copayers would have to sign off before money can move from your wallet.

Why Use a Multi-Signature Wallet?

With a multi-signature wallet setup like the one above, a thief would need to steal both private keys to access your bitcoin. Even if a thief got one of your private keys, he wouldn't be able to do anything with your money. He would need at least two private keys to make a transaction.

A multi-signature wallet setup can also protect your private keys against operating system vulnerabilities and security bugs. If you have a 2-of-2 wallet with private keys on two different operating systems (say, a Windows desktop and an iOS smartphone), you won't have to worry about your funds if one of those platforms gets compromised.

As you can see, a multi-signature wallet secures your bitcoin better than just about anything else available today.

Remember that owning a multi-signature wallet not only increases your security but also your personal responsibility. You will need to make sure to securely back up each of your two copaying private keys. In the example above, if you lost either of the two devices with which you shared your wallet and do not have their wallet backup phrases, you will lose access to your bitcoin.

However you choose to set up your multi-signature wallet, think through your security setup and act carefully to keep your backup phrases safe and accessible.

Getting Started with a Multi-Signature Wallet

Ready to get started with multi-signature wallet security? The following video shows how to create a multi-signature wallet and send a multi-signature payment in the BitPay wallet app:

In all previous versions of Bitcore, your Bitcore instance depended on a custom extension of the Satoshi Bitcoin software. This meant that any updates to the Bitcoin protocol would require an additional Bitcore release to add support. Now you can change your Bitcoin client, upgrade it or downgrade it, whenever and however you want. As long as your client can talk to the Bitcoin network, Bitcore can use it.

Run Bitcore on any Bitcoin implementation

By default, Bitcoin now runs on a node of Bcoin, a fully Node.js-based Bitcoin client implementation. This default to Bcoin will provide more of the functionality which Bitcore developers love about Bitcore, with easy extensibility to create new Bitcore services. With Bcoin, your Bitcore instance also now automatically supports Segregated Witness (Segwit).

Bitcore's Bcoin implementation makes deploying a block explorer simple. Spin up a bcoin-based Bitcore full node and block explorer in two easy steps:

npm install -g bitcore@beta  
bitcored  

Requirement: You will need to be running Node.js v8.2.0+.

To switch underlying Bitcoin implementations, you can point Bitcore to any full node which supports the Bitcoin P2P protocol, even another fork of Bitcoin. And since you won't need to fork Bitcore's codebase to do it, switching implementations is easier than ever. You can choose which Bitcoin transaction validation rules you want to use, whether Segwit or different block sizes.

Get more transaction information coverage with new mempool indexes

Bitcore version 5.0 adds new indexes for querying the Bitcoin network's mempool – the transactions which have not yet been added to blocks.

Previously we relied on bitcoind's mempool for Bitcore services and for our own Insight block explorer. During the recent uptick in unconfirmed transactions and confirmation times on the Bitcoin network, we received user feedback noting the large number of transactions which get excluded from queries as a result.

Now Bitcore's mempool coverage is more permissive, allowing for more unconfirmed mempool transactions to show in Bitcore-based block explorers like Insight.

Make your Bitcoin application ready for prime time

We created Bitcore to provide a powerful platform for enterprises to build services that interact with the Bitcoin blockchain. These are the tools we've used to build BitPay, including the BitPay wallet, the Copay wallet, and our Insight block explorer.

Now those services have a layer above the Bitcoin implementation which adds even more flexibility for developers. We've already field tested many of Bitcore's most important features in BitPay's own products, and we're excited to see what you can do with them.

Remember that this preview version of Bitcore is still in beta. We're standing by to respond to feedback and bugs.