WalletBit, a payment processor and online wallet that had acquired some attention especially in Canada and Denmark, has announced that it is shutting down on July 15. “Despite sales efforts,” the press release reads, “it is now unfortunately discovered, due to a number of factors, that it is not possible to transfer all or parts of WalletBit to a new operator. As a result of that combined with new commitments, it is not possible for us to continue offering services via WalletBit.”
The shutdown is hardly unexpected. WalletBit has been rapidly declining in popularity for the last few months since its only two employees, Adam Harding and Kris Henriksen, had developed a new platform to perform the same functions: BIPS.”I will hopefully convince merchants and ewallet user to switch to the more optimized BIPS platform,” Kris Henriksen had written, “but they are welcome to stay at WalletBit.” Since then, BIPS has been quite successful, processing over $400,000 of payments by the beginning of June. BIPS was responsible for getting single.dk, a popular Danish online dating site, to accept Bitcoin, as well as several brick-and-mortar locations including a theater in Denmark and CoWorkingSpace in Toronto. Given this success, Harding and Henriksen have decided to work on BIPS full force.
The two are careful to avoid telling users that they are expected to switch to BIPS; “I prefer people to make their own choices,” Henriksen writes; “so many times I have experienced companies changing structure and people being highly disappointed with the new.” The two main alternatives that WalletBit users have to choose from are BIPS and BitPay, which also allows bank account payouts in European countries. In the United States, another alternative is Coinbase, and those who wish to accept bitcoins directly without converting earnings to fiat currency can use Coinbase anywhere in the world. The payment processor ecosystem is expected to only continue to improve as time goes on.
