AT&T does not need an introduction. It is one of the largest American enterprises, considering all fields and sectors, with a noteworthy track record on telecommunications. It provides mobile phone services and owns a mass media network that includes some of the best known entertainment companies in the planet, among other things.
In an effort to keep up with modern times and ensure all users have the most possible options to pay for its services; AT&T announced in recent hours that customers will be able to provide payments of their bills with the company in cryptocurrencies through the famous BitPay platform.
A Little Bit More about BitPay
BitPay is an ecosystem that allows people and shops to accept Bitcoin for online payments, with no hidden fees, chargebacks or ID thefts. Users are able to receive funds directly to their bank accounts with no price volatility or risk, per its website. BitPay also converts cryptocurrencies to fiat and is used by more than 20,000 businesses worldwide.
For now, according to the company, people cannot provide payments in cryptocurrencies for acquiring some of the firm’s offered products, such as phones. The option is only available to serve as an additional alternative for users of some AT&T services at the time of paying their bills.
Kevin McDorman, who currently acts as the Vice President of AT&T Communications Finance Business Operations, expressed that “we’re always looking for ways to improve and expand our services. We have customers who use cryptocurrency, and we are happy we can offer them a way to pay their bills with the method they prefer.”
“BitPay provides payment processing services for merchants and is one of the largest bitcoin payment processors in the world. Our customers are on this platform and we are always looking for different ways to better serve our customers,” he told a famous crypto news site at the time of the announcement.
The First of its Kind
Reports coming out of the crypto industry suggest that AT&T, which is in the top 10 in Fortune 500’s ranking of top American companies by revenue as of 2018, is the first United States-based firm in the wireless network field to offer its customers the opportunity to pay for services and bills with BitPay.
According to the press release published by the company, “customers will be able to select BitPay as a payment option when they log on to their accounts online or with the myAT&T app.”
At the end of 2018, AT&T made it public that it was developing a suite of blockchain solutions and products that were compatible with IBM Blockchain Platform and Microsoft Azure. The intention of working on the suite was to offer “additional transparency and accountability to even the most complex supply chains” for institutional customers in several industries, for example, retail and healthcare.
The company also filed an application for a patent for a social media history map that would let networks such as AT&T’s to collect information about its clients’ social media transaction data. The application explained that the social media history map platforms described “may take advantage of the immutable and permanent nature of blockchain records to store, and provide access to, data representing online transactions that occur on multiple social media applications.”
By Andres Chavez
