BitPay offers new pricing plans for bitcoin payment processing

Bitcoin payment processor BitPay has announced three new pricing plans ranging from $30 per month to £3,000 per month.

All of the plans come with 0% transaction fees and will be available from November, with the cheapest - the Professional plan – costing $30 per month. This can be used on one domain and offers "easy" eCommerce tools, retail POS tools, 20 shopping cart plugins, daily bank deposits to 30 countries and email support.

The Business plan costs $300 per month and can be used on three domains. It comes with all the features of the Professional package, plus it enables users to import sales data into QuickBooks, offers unlimited daily processing and also features phone support.

At $3,000 per month, the Enterprise package comes with all the features of the Business package, plus users will have a dedicated account manager, VPN access for fastest performance, priority phone and email support and it can be used on an unlimited number of domains.

Tony Gallippi, CEO at BitPay, explained why the company decided to introduce the new pricing options: "BitPay is going after the SaaS (software as a service) model that is popular in other industries today and bringing this model to the payment processing space."

He went on to say the new pricing plans mean merchants are only charged for the features they need and don't get stung with transaction fees.

The company still offers a Starter package, which has no monthly cost, but comes with a 1% transaction fee.

Gallippi said BitPay and other companies within the bitcoin space are moving on from last week's Silk Road scandal and suggested the closure of the black market website could be positive for digital currency.

"The bitcoin industry has been making positive contributions for years, but these have been overshadowed by Silk Road. Now, there's room for other vendors to get their positive news out," he explained.

Disclaimer: CoinDesk founder Shakil Khan is an investor in BitPay.