In October 2015, Nexusguard, a systems security company that specializes in DDoS defense, started accepting bitcoin as a form of payment after one of their large international clients requested assistance when their servers came under a DDoS attack.
Speaking to Bitcoin Magazine, Xenophon Giannis, vice president of Nexusguard, explained why they turned their attention to the digital currency.
“We needed to accept a large payment and did not have the luxury to wait the standard five days for a wire transfer,” said Giannis. “The bitcoin transfer was completed in less than one hour.”
Since that first foray into the world of digital currency payments, Nexusguard has made Bitcoin an essential part of its brand strategy and has worked with other companies in the bitcoin space.
For example, BitMinter, one of the first bitcoin mining pools, found that it also needed a way to ensure its position and security. BitMinter began in June 2011 and at its peak, it controlled 10 percent of global computing power for bitcoin mining, making it an attractive target for competitors and attackers alike. Nexusguard was able to deliver critical stability and maximum up-time for BitMinter, ensuring a predictable cash flow, uninterrupted by attacks.
And BitMinter was able to pay in bitcoin.
While BitMinter wasn’t the use-case that got the bitcoin ball rolling with Nexusguard, BitMinter was the first bitcoin-centered client account with the company.
“After they became a customer,” said Giannis, “they were thrilled that we would accept bitcoin as a form of payment, enabling us to keep them as a loyal client and fan of Nexusguard.”
BitPay’s Email Billing Tool
Typically, when it comes to accepting payment from international clients, most companies opt for electronic bills or wire transfers. These both have their shortcomings: higher processing costs, fraud, delays in payment, payments that arrive with less than the full amount due and little or no information about fees.
For processing bitcoin payments, Nexusguard turned to BitPay. Established in 2011, BitPay provides merchants with an email billing tool that they can use for invoicing via bitcoin, enabling them to eliminate the transfer wait times, high fees and complex processing steps involved in international wire transfers. Nexusguard is one client taking advantage of the email billing tool to bypass the legacy international transfer system.
“Bitcoin billing is especially popular among merchants that provide consulting, freelance work or software as a service,” BitPay Marketing Associate James Walpole told Bitcoin Magazine. “The transactions these firms accept through our email billing tool make up more than 10 percent of our total processing volume in USD terms and the average order size of a B2B billing payment is twenty five times the size of an average consumer bitcoin payment.”
As well as providing its services to clients such as Nexusguard, BitPay billing is also attracting smaller clients who want to reach people across the world in a fast, secure and convenient way. Latin America is one area that is experiencing the greatest transaction growth with a year-over-year increase of 1,747 percent in 2015.
“The region is experiencing rapid growth in ecommerce and mobile phone use, but credit card payments are still only available to a fraction of the total population,” said Walpole. “That’s part of the reason why bitcoin makes sense for Latin America’s online consumers and for international businesses that want to reach Latin American markets.”
The Future
The fact that Nexusguard accepts bitcoin as payment has made it easier for companies in the space, like BitMinter, to pay them in a far more convenient way, without having to go through the additional hassle of converting bitcoins to U.S. dollars. As more companies discover and accept bitcoin, they begin to realize the potential for them to attract and retain a broader clientele.
“Our five years of experience in bitcoin payment processing has helped us build a strong case that bitcoin can solve old problems for ecommerce and B2B payments in new ways,” said Walpole. “We’ll continue to reach out to more merchants like Nexusguard who can save money, reduce payment fraud and reach a global customer base by adding bitcoin as a payment option.”