ETA Welcomes BitPay as First Bitcoin Member
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- Electronic Transactions Association (ETA), which represents Visa, MasterCard, Amazon and PayPal, welcomed BitPay as its first virtual currency company member on August 6, per a press release pledging more such partnerships ahead.
- ETA CEO Jason Oxman told CoinDesk the organization has not advocated for Bitcoin and holds no official position favoring one technology over another, framing the ETA as open to any electronic transaction form merchants and customers choose.
- Oxman credited the Bitcoin Foundation — particularly general counsel Patrick Murck's 2013 ETA event presentation — with giving members a business-focused understanding of Bitcoin that led to at least one member striking a deal with a Bitcoin processor.
- Oxman urged the NYDFS not to apply "reflexive rules" to Bitcoin, calling for regulators to study how the blockchain and Bitcoin processors protect consumers and merchants rather than constraining innovation.
- NYDFS superintendent Benjamin Lawsky extended the BitLicense public comment period by 45 days earlier this week, pushing the deadline to October 21 after receiving a joint letter from BTC China, Huobi, and OkCoin raising concerns about the proposal.
Why it matters: BitPay's entry into the ETA gives the Bitcoin industry a formal foothold inside the lobby group for the biggest names in card and online payments — Visa, MasterCard, Amazon, PayPal — and Oxman's explicit openness to more such partnerships lowers the institutional barrier for future deals between legacy processors and crypto startups, even as regulators in New York decide the rules those startups will have to play under.
