BitPay soothes Payment Protocol frictions with new JSON interface

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Nigel Frith
Nigel Frith
Former Global General Manager
Nigel was the Global General Manager at FXcompared. Nigel has a background in marketing for businesses and consumers as well working in a variety of online financial services roles. Read more
  • Interface solves problems with money transfers using bitcoin and e-wallets
  • New format hopes to “reduce payment errors to zero”

Bitcoin-based international money transfers firm BitPay has responded to criticisms of its recent Payment Protocol requirement from its partners in the bitcoin wallet ecosystem by developing a new Payment Protocol interface, which it believes will simplify matters and ease frictions substantially.

In its company blog, BitPay emphasised that its recent Payment Protocol requirement has already resulted in a “dramatic reduction” in payment errors (which are a common nuisance in cryptocurrency money transfers operations). The BitPay underpayment count dropped by 90.24% in 60 days, company figures show.

According to BitPay, thousands of bitcoin users making money transfers through its platform have saved time and money as a result of the major decrease in the familiar glitches (chiefly the miner fee expenses incurred by erroneous payments and the ensuing refunds).

The blog continues: “We have been paying close attention to the feedback from the bitcoin wallet ecosystem about Payment Protocol. While we have seen remarkable improvements in the rate of successful bitcoin payments since we launched this requirement on our invoices, we also know that Payment Protocol can be difficult for wallets and exchanges to implement.”

To address these concerns, BitPay has devised a new Payment Protocol interface using JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) – a lightweight data-interchange format which is relatively simple for humans to read and write. Because JSON is a more familiar serialisation format for developers of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), it should make understanding and implementing BitPay’s Payment Protocol substantially easier for wallets and exchanges.

The JSON interface also happens to be currency-agnostic, which means that, going forward, it will work smoothly with other currencies accepted on BitPay invoices. It enables direct communication between wallets and BitPay’s servers, which will be able to automatically reject incorrect payments to BitPay and prevent unnecessary miner fees. The payment won’t reach the BitPay Blockchain, so no fees will be incurred.

The blog adds: “We expect that this change will allow us to reduce payment errors to zero.”


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