Founded initially by Square, Inc., COPA believes open access to patents and freedom from threats on foundational cryptocurrency technologies is necessary for the industry to grow, innovate, and build new products.

“BitPay is partnering with and supporting COPA because we believe that the blockchain space is at an inflection point where crypto is becoming mainstream forever changing the way businesses and consumers receive and spend funds,” Stephen Pair, CEO of BitPay, said. “We see both business and consumer adoption accelerating as a result of COPA industry leaders working together to advance technology innovation making the blockchain easy to use for both businesses and consumers.”

COPA is a non-profit community of like-minded people and companies formed to encourage the adoption and advancement of cryptocurrency technologies and to remove patents as a barrier to growth and innovation. COPA acknowledges that cryptocurrency technology is built on the collaborative efforts of a community made up of developers, engineers, and designers. COPA provides an open patent strategy where anyone can join and benefit from the alliance, regardless of whether they have patents or not.

“We want to eliminate barriers to innovation, rather than letting patents become one, and welcome BitPay and their many contributions to the blockchain and payments space,” said Kirupa Pushparaj, COPA Board Chair.

Businesses and consumers face major challenges when transacting cross borders. So, BitPay pioneered blockchain payment processing to enable borderless payments using cryptocurrencies like BTC, BCH, ETH, DOGE and stablecoins USDC, GUSD, PAX and BUSD. BitPay’s business solutions eliminate transaction fraud, reduce the cost of payment processing, and enable borderless payments in cryptocurrency. BitPay also offers consumers a complete digital asset management solution that includes the BitPay Wallet app and BitPay Prepaid Mastercard®, enabling them to turn digital assets into dollars for spending at tens of thousands of businesses.