Newegg, a leading online retailer of computer hardware and consumer electronics in North America, announced that is accepting bitcoin from Canada customers.
Newegg Accepts Bitcoin From Customers in Canada
The company started accepting bitcoin payments from its U.S. customers in August 2014, but the cryptocurrency market has grown into a trendy asset class since then. The bitcoin option used to represent only a small stream of purchase transactions back then, but the increasing mainstream awareness has encouraged Newegg to extend the option beyond the U.S. and into Canada.
Danny Lee, Chief Executive Officer of Newegg, commented: “In 2014 Newegg was among the first major companies to offer customers a bitcoin payment option.
“Since that time the value of bitcoin has skyrocketed and customers holding bitcoin have considerably more purchasing power. We believe the time is right to broaden our acceptance of bitcoin to our customers in Canada.”
Most of the company’s 36 million customers reside in North America, which explains the focus in the region. BitPay, the global bitcoin payment service provider, is Newegg’s longstanding partner and will remain that way, managing all bitcoin-related transactions in both countries.
Newegg uses BitPay’s API to create and manage invoices, issue refunds, manage bills, retrieve real-time rates information, and view merchant ledger entries. The enterprise-grade merchant tool achieves 99.99% uptime.
Stephen Pair, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of BitPay, said: “Newegg was an early e-commerce adopter of bitcoin, and that leap of faith the company took in 2014 put Newegg on the map as a bitcoin-friendly place for tech enthusiasts to shop. We’re seeing a lot of traction in Canada, and we’re happy to see Newegg extend its bitcoin payment option north of the border.”
BitPay will process an estimated amount of payments worth $4 billion in 2018. This week, the company announced a partnership with Bithump Exchange to enable businesses in South Korea to issue invoices in Bitcoin and get settled through BitPay.
The world’s leading bitcoin payment processor has recently introduced support for Bitcoin Cash as an extra currency, while it doesn’t extend to transactions and payment processing.
Since December 2017, BitPay started charging two fees to complete bitcoin transactions. The second charge is a network cost, which won’t get refunded either.
The company is headquartered in California, United States, but it is owned by Chinese group Hangzhou Liaison Interactive Information Technology Co. Ltd. Earlier this year, Newegg notified its customers that it had failed to collect sales tax on purchases in the past three years. Facing a choice between collecting such tax in the future or turning over customer information to the government, the company chose the latter.