An interesting partnership is in the works across the cryptocurrency industry. Leading payment processor BitPay is in negotiations with Ripple – through its Coil subsidiary – to officially support XRP payments. That would mark a major milestone for both entities in this industry. It also shows there is a lot more to payments in this industry than just Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash.

Coil and BitPay

It has been a while since BitPay made any relevant headlines in the cryptocurrency industry. For a payment processor, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. As long as their service remains operational and there is no huge dropoff in overall numbers, everything is going according to plan. This most recent development, however, is rather interesting for the industry as a whole. Openly partnering with Coil and integrating Xpring is pretty remarkable, for obvious reasons. 

More specifically, Coil has officially partnered with BitPay to integrate XRP payments as part of their merchant processing services. Additionally, there is an agreement to integrate Xpring into BitPay Wallet. These two milestones are beneficial to both consumers and global businesses alike. It will be intriguing to see what comes of this new partnership. Many people oppose XRP as a payment method yet the world’s leading Bitcoin payment processor doesn’t share that vision in the slightest. 

When Will it go Live?

For the time being, there is a lack of information as to when XRP payments will go live on BitPay. There is a mention of how this will happen near the end of the year, but no further specifics are available at this time. The integration of XRP and Xpring will take a bit of time, as the technology and infrastructure are very different from Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash. Those two currencies have been supported for a while now yet it seems time to experiment with something new entirely. 

The timing of this announcement comes at a crucial moment. The cryptocurrency industry is still reeling as far as BTC and CH are concerned. XRP Seems to perform slightly better in this regard, although it too remains under a lot of bearish pressure.  Recent research claims the e-commerce retail industry will become a $6tn market by 2022. This is good news for cryptocurrency payment processors, assuming they decide to support the assets which consumers and business want to deal with. 

What Does it Mean for XRP?

On the surface, one would expect these developments to push the XRP price to new highs in the weeks and months ahead. That situation might not necessarily materialize anytime soon. It is a bit of an uneasy period for all cryptocurrencies, tokens, and digital assets right now. As such, news like this will cause some excitement, yet it may not necessarily have any notable price impact either.