One technology that has been making waves in recent years is the Bitcoin. For the uninitiated, Bitcoin is one of the many cryptocurrencies that allows for making digital payments and transactions in ways thought to be impossible a decade back. It is gaining steady popularity among businesses mainly for two reasons – one it operates without any central bank intervention and two payments can be made anonymously on a peer to peer basis from anywhere in the world. Industry insiders expect it to revolutionise the payments sector once a strong regulatory framework is set up. Therefore, it will not be too long before companies start advocating bitcoin payments for their customers. In this blogpost, we will look at how to incorporate bitcoin into your WordPress website.

Setting up Bitcoin

There are 3 main components for setting up bitcoin payment namely –

• a bitcoin wallet
• a digital payment processor service
• a cryptocurrency WordPress plugin.

The Bitcoin wallet can be thought of a virtual safe where all your earnings can be stored – it can be anything ranging from mobile, desktop, any hardware, web. The client would have to decide on the appropriate platform depending on their needs. Developers would do well to remember that there are some digital payment process services may come with their own wallets unlike standard payment gateways that deposit the Bitcoin in that country’s equivalent currency, eliminating the need for wallet itself.

Next, we have the digital payment processor service that enables the Bitcoin transaction to your website. In addition to that, they also have the provision to transfer payments directly into the client’s wallet. There are many digital payment processor services, some of which we will be listing – Bitpay, CoinBase, CoinGate. Only clients who hire a dedicated developer will be able to take the right decision on signing up for the right service because each service has its pros and cons. For instance, while Bitpay and CoinBase have their own wallets, CoinGate doesn’t come with that provision. On the other hand, CoinGate supports 45 other cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin.

The final step is to find the right plugin for adding Bitcoin payment integration into the client’s website. As with the above, there are several plugins for integrating Bitcoin. There is Blockonomics which allows clients to get payments to their wallet through WooCommerce. To get started they must create an account after which they are accept transaction in 3 different cryptocurrenices – Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin. Likewise, we also recommend Bitpay, especially if the client is already using WooCommerce on their website. There are other plugins like Digital Paybox, Mollie Payments, GoURL and so on. Some of these plugins are premium with support for additional cryptocurrencies and some like Mollie are payment gateways that have the ability to transfer Bitcoin to the client’s bank account. Each plugin comes with its own documentation enabling developers to assess which plugin works for the client.

Finally, it all boils down to clients hiring a dedicated WordPress developer in case they want to incorporate a bitcoin payment mechanism into their website without any hassles. It only takes a bit of research and trial error on the part of clients and developers before they can decide on the right plugin or method. For any request to hire a programmer, drop us a mail today and our developer team will get back to you as soon as possible.