BitPay Receives BitLicense from New York Department of Financial Services

Global crypto payments processor BitPay has been granted a BitLicense by New York сtate’s financial regulator, according to a press release shared with Cointelegraph July 16.

The recently acquired virtual currency license from New York’s Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) will allow BitPay to do business with customers and companies based in the state. Additionally, New York-based business will be able to use BitPay to accept Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) for purchases from users worldwide.

NYDFS, which governs rules for virtual currency business activity, examined BitPay’s level of compliance with anti-money laundering (AML), know your customer (KYC), anti-fraud, capitalization, and cybersecurity policies before granting the license. BitPay CEO Stephen Pair said:

“New York state has one of the strictest policies around businesses involved in cryptocurrency and working through the approval processes to obtain a License was important to BitPay. We believe this hard work will pay off as New York presents significant business opportunities for BitPay.”

BitPay is the eighth company to receive a BitLicense from the NYDFS, joining other crypto-related firms such as Square, Genesis Global Trading, bitFlyer USA, Coinbase, XRP II and Circle Internet Financial.

In April, after crypto exchange and wallet Coinbase announced they suspended  “custodial” solutions for merchants, the CEO of flight aggregator CheapAir suggested BitPay’s crypto wallet as a replacement option.

In March, BitPay partnered with South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb in order to compete in the global remittance market. CCO of  BitPay Sonny Singh said that businesses will be able to convert invoices to Bitcoin and settle them more quickly and cheaply than via bank-based remittance channels.