BitPay announced that its platform can now accept payments in Shiba Inu (SHIB), while consumers can choose to buy, store, and swap the digital currency in the BitPay Wallet app. The Dogecoin-rival might have begun as a joke, but an active ShibArmy along with the response from AMC Theatres and Newegg, have catapulted SHIB to the top of the list of coins to add. The increased popularity sees Shiba Inu in the top 15 cryptocurrencies by market capitalisation on CoinMarketCap.
“The Shiba Inu community is passionate about its coin and serious about giving those consumers places to spend SHIB,” Stephen Pair, CEO of the popular cryptocurrency payments service BitPay, said. “BitPay believes that the more community involvement from coin holders supports awareness and adoption helping to move the blockchain industry to pave the way for blockchain payments to disrupt the way consumers and businesses receive and spend funds.”
The meme token has joined Bitcoin, Ether, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Dogecoin and several stablecoins on the list of available cryptocurrencies with BitPay.
According to BitPay, the move was necessary after the company received an overwhelming number of requests to include the meme coin as a payment option from the community supporters, the ShibArmy.
It further expressed its satisfaction with the token’s value growth, inclusivity, and the efforts that have gone into making it more decentralised including its evolution into the Shiba Inu ecosystem called ShibaSwap which is a decentralised exchange built on the Ethereum network.
The addition also means that Bitpay users will now be able to spend their SHIB tokens using the Bitpay virtual card which acts as a wallet at any user outlet that accepts Mastercard. The transaction will involve converting their SHIBokens into USD or paying altogether in SHIB depending on the outlet’s payment preference which will make the transactions seamless.
Apart from shopping at various outlets, users will be able to purchase gift cards using the firm’s app at hundreds of businesses across sectors. Currently, a huge number of businesses in different sectors such as travel, software, entertainment, and gaming are already accepting payments in cryptocurrencies through Bitpay. These include the likes of Amazon, Walmart, Delta, hard crypto wallet maker Ledger, Microsoft, Twitch, Fast Private Jet among others.