BitPay at 15: Looking Back, Building Forward

Stephen Pair, Co-Founder and CEO of BitPay, looks back at 15 years of shaping the future of payments.

Fifteen years ago, five transactions in a day felt meaningful.

When Tony and I started BitPay in 2011, Bitcoin was still hard for most people to explain, let alone use. There were no polished checkout flows, no enterprise payment teams asking about stablecoin settlement, and no clear playbook for how a business should integrate blockchain payments.

That was the reality. And that was the opportunity.

What drew me to Bitcoin was simple. It felt revolutionary. For the first time, there was a way for value to move across the internet without depending on the same financial infrastructure that had shaped payments for decades. But for that future to matter, people needed to be able to use it.

That was the problem we wanted to solve with BitPay. We believed Bitcoin had long-term value, but we did not want cryptocurrency to be something people only held, traded, or talked about. We wanted to help people and businesses get real value out of it.

That basic idea has carried us for 15 years: remove the complexity, preserve the value, and make crypto payments work for real people and real businesses.

For years, our industry talked about what blockchain payments could do. They could make cross-border payments faster. They could lower costs. They could help businesses reach new customers. They could give consumers new ways to spend and manage money. That is no longer theoretical. It is happening.

In 2025, BitPay processed hundreds of millions of dollars across nearly a million transactions, making it one of our biggest years ever. That milestone matters not just because of the numbers, but because of what they represent. Crypto payments have moved from experiment to everyday utility.

That progress did not happen all at once. It happened because merchants kept testing, consumers kept spending, builders kept improving the infrastructure, and the industry kept pushing toward simpler ways to use digital assets. We are proud of the role BitPay has played in that progress.

But this anniversary is not a finish line. A bigger opportunity is still ahead.

The next 15 years will be defined by broader adoption, better user experiences, stronger stablecoin infrastructure, and deeper connections between crypto and everyday financial activity.

The work now is the same as it was in 2011, to make this technology useful and accessible to everyone. That means helping merchants reach more customers. Helping consumers manage and spend crypto more easily. Helping businesses move money across borders with less friction. Helping the industry build trust through products that solve real problems.

We are grateful to everyone who has been part of BitPay’s first 15 years. To our merchants, customers, partners, employees, and everyone in our community who stayed on course even when the path was uncertain.

Now we keep building for the next 15.

- Stephen Pair, Co-Founder and CEO