Despite the rising popularity of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, there are very few places where you can actually pay using BTC and even fewer states where the government accepts it, but city of North Dakota is now allowing you to pay using Bitcoin for amenities there, Techstory learns.
The city has partnered up with Bitpay, a crypto firm, to start accepting payments in BTC for utilities. Although the initial plans were for crypto payments to be used only for utility bills, more bills are expected to become eligible too.
North Dakota has become the 3rd city in the US to offer such options.
Incorporating Bitcoin as a payment method offers advantages that governments can enjoy and the biggest one is the service charge. While Google pay, Apple Pay, and Paypal charge 3% of the payment made, BitPay keeps only 1%. That is a lot of savings for the city.
Another perk is the fact that Bitcoin is secure and practically not hackable, and is easy to track and manage.
In order to pay using Bitcoin, you need to go to the city website, link your accounts with BitPay or make an account with them to pay using Bitcoin. The process is easy and is similar to making payments using fiat currencies.
BitPay is a very big company, and there are many institutions that have partnered up with them for accepting crypto. Facebook and Microsoft are one of them. So, this step by the North Dakota government to incorporate crypto in the system is much appreciated.