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FitPay Inc. has started shipping its contactless, coin-shaped Flip device, which allows users to spend Bitcoin as U.S. dollars at stores. The company said on Wednesday it plans to “ramp up” production of Flip though the first half of the year. The news comes after Fit Pay announced in January that it intended to start shipping the $29 device on Feb. 13.
FitPay announced Flip in February of last year and began taking pre-orders for it a few weeks later. The seven-week delay in the initial shipment date apparently stemmed from a variety of complications, according to Michael Orlando, president of FitPay. “When you’re charting new territory, you tend to run into ecosystem and legacy platform hurdles,” Orlando tells Digital Transactions News in an email message. “We are very pleased to have cleared those.”
The device is ready for commercial use, he adds. “Flip and the platforms that support it are now live,” he says. “Having used Flip at a number of retail stores already, I can tell you it is a really unique payment experience that gets a reaction every time.”
FitPay, based in San Diego, is a unit of Melbourne, Fla.-based Nxt-ID Inc., which is expected on Thursday to release an update about its planned spin-off of FitPay and a credential-management business.
Flip includes a digital wallet that stores funds after the user exchanges Bitcoin holdings for dollars. It features an embedded antenna allowing it to interact with contactless readers at the point of sale. Account and exchange fees apply, and the device is available only in the United States. FitPay will not release information on shipments.
While Bitcoin’s price has surged to around $5,000 in recent days, its median transaction fee has also climbed. That fee, which users pay when they spend Bitcoin, stood at 75 cents at mid-morning Wednesday, the highest it has been since it briefly exceeded $1 in June 2018, according to Bitinfocharts.com.
In other blockchain-related news, health-care payments provider InstaMed Inc. on Wednesday released an app with a blockchain prototype that it says will demonstrate how the technology can support adjudication and payment for insurance claims, patient billing, and patient payment.
“The InstaMed innovation team is constantly looking at the latest trends in technology, and it made sense to explore ways to use blockchain technology in health-care payments with its potential to increase connectivity among all stakeholders,” said Chris Seib, chief technology officer at the 15-year-old company, in a statement
Based in Philadelphia, InstaMed is a registered independent sales organization for Wells Fargo & Co. and U.S. Bank.
