CoinGate in 2017: What We’ve Done, and What’s Next?

At the beginning of 2017, CoinGate roadmap for the year was outlined. We can say with confidence that, during the mere 5 months of 2017, a lot has been accomplished already. Read on to find out what’s happening with CoinGate, and what we plan for the exciting upcoming summer.

So much is changing in the landscape of Bitcoin and the whole field of cryptocurrencies – we couldn’t be more excited. In this emerging new industry our team is constantly facing new challenges and opportunities. Although things are sometimes overwhelming, at the same time, the fast-paced environment suits us perfectly. This year, a range of new features have been implemented, and there are many more big updates to come.

3 important milestones reached!

The last week of May marked several important milestones for CoinGate:

• 100,000 merchant orders generated
• 25,000 paid merchant orders
• 10,000 registered users

We’re really pleased to have gone so far, and equally excited about the future. In 2017, CoinGate has been growing faster than ever before. These mere 5 months have contributed to more than two-thirds of our three achievements.

What we’ve done so far for our beloved Merchants:

Altcoins via ShapeShift.io

The total market capitalization of Altcoins has increased from under $3 billion in February, to over $50 billion in June! The demand for alternative cryptocurrency payments has been booming alongside, and we decided to fill the growing gap. CoinGate invoices now contain the Shifty button, enabling customers to pay with 40+ Altcoins in addition to Bitcoin.

If you’re looking to pay with Litecoin, Ethereum, Zcash, Monero, Dash, Ripple, Golem, or one of the many other Altcoins – you’re welcome to do so! Try it out on our sample invoice.

Accept Underpaid Orders

Our system functionality was extended with the goal to minimize the number of expired orders that naturally arise due to the technological design of Bitcoin. Thus, merchants can now set a desired threshold up to which underpaid orders are automatically accepted and processed. The feature is extremely helpful and improves end-user experience, especially for those who are just starting out with Bitcoin payments. In addition to our option of extending invoice expiration time, the functionality has allowed our Bitcoin merchants to enjoy a hassle-free integration that only requires manual input in rare instances.

API upgrade

Our API has now been moved onto a subdomain, a new pull method for listing orders was added, and further improvements to the security of our API were made. Full documentation for developers, as always, is available here.

Our growing base of Traders and other Users can now enjoy:

Buying Bitcoin in EUR / USD by bank wire from all over the world

New bank accounts were opened to enable customers to purchase Bitcoin not just in Europe, but across the world. Any user with access to a bank account, can now send us a bank wire either in EUR or USD and buy bitcoins for a real-time market rate taken from one of several largest Bitcoin exchanges.

Buy bitcoins with Credit / Debit cards

Due to increasing demand to buy Bitcoin quickly and conveniently, we’ve partnered with Simplex to enable our customers to buy bitcoins with their credit cards and debit cards in a matter of a couple of hours or even 30-some minutes. The feature was launched back in February, and it has become one of the few services out there, that does not require registering and verifying your identity before actually making a purchase.

Coming up soon:

A brand new design of our website

We’re happy to be half-way through with our complete website design revamp. Following the website update, a new look for user dashboard and invoices is in our plans, so stay tuned!

Extension of accounting features

Our customers have requested for additional tools to deal with processed orders more efficiently and conveniently. Therefore, we have decided to upgrade our Merchant Tools section in the user dashboard, to improve the experience of handling accounting related chores.

Real-time conversion of Bitcoin deposits into Fiat balances

Currently, our platform works under a system of invoices, which is great for e-commerce and various online businesses. However, Bitcoin is a unique currency because users are always in control of how much money they are sending.

Therefore, we plan to develop a feature that will allow businesses to collect their customers funds regardless of the transaction size, without having to depend on a brief time-window for completion of payment. What this means is that the user can send any amount of bitcoins, and once confirmed on the Blockchain, the funds can be converted into Fiat currency according to a real-time market rate.

Payouts via API 

Due to popular demand, CoinGate will be extending the API functionality for making Bitcoin payouts directly to your customers. If you have been on the lookout for a way to conveniently pay your affiliates or customer winnings with Bitcoin, we will start offering this feature in the near future.

Alongside our real-time Bitcoin deposit feature, our API shall become an essential but super simple tool for businesses that wish to get into the world of cryptocurrencies, and particularly for online casinos and gambling websites, sportsbooks, and FX brokerages.

To conclude…

Meanwhile, the CoinGate team is working hard to improve the range of services that we offer, and we aim to expand into other areas of the emerging cryptocurrency industry as well. Our growth indicates that customers appreciate our efforts and that there are plenty of opportunities ahead. 

The first half of 2017 was huge for Bitcoin and Blockchain as well as other cryptocurrencies. As you may well know, the demand for virtually every Coin out there has increased massively. Evidently, serious issues of scaling Bitcoin have arised alongside the increasing demand, massively raising the importance of Altcoins. The second half of 2017 should therefore be as interesting and exciting as the first one, if not more.

We strongly believe in a future for Bitcoin. As we have officially stated previously, our team strongly supports SegWit as the best Bitcoin scaling solution, and we therefore maintain a close eye on BIP148 (UASF). We wish to reassure that CoinGate is here to stay: whatever the changes in the Bitcoin landscape, our team is ready to adjust to any technological developments. In the end, our goal has always been to make cryptocurrencies accessible, simple and convenient for both businesses and individuals.

Thank you for reading – if you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or anything else, don’t ever hesitate to reach out!