Payouts (Sending Crypto)

What are payouts?

BitPay payouts allow you to send cryptocurrency outbound to people you would like to pay. Use cases include employee payroll, B2B payments, paying freelancers/contractors, and more. Your business will simply wire fiat currency to BitPay's bank, then use your merchant dashboard or our API to initiate your payouts. You won't need to worry about which cryptocurrency your recipients want to receive - they can configure that themselves using their own BitPay portal.

Cryptocurrency Payouts Implementation Guide

Confirm Interest: Begin by confirming the interest of employees or recipients in receiving cryptocurrency payouts through BitPay. Implement an opt-in process, such as distributing a survey or form, where they can express their interest in receiving crypto payments.

Educate and Inform: Ensure that employees are well-informed about the benefits, risks, and implications of receiving cryptocurrency payouts via BitPay. Provide them with resources to learn more about cryptocurrencies and address any questions or concerns they may have.

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Invitations should not be used as the first touchpoint to gauge interest or educate users on crypto payouts.

Collect Information: Gather the necessary information from recipients who have expressed interest in receiving crypto payouts. This includes their email addresses and, if applicable, the amount of cryptocurrency they would like to receive.

Verify Funds Availability: Before you can send a payout to a recipient, you need to make sure that your BitPay ledger has been credited with the necessary funds to satisfy the payout + BitPay's 1% fee. You can check your ledger balance in your merchant dashboard, or using an API call. If you do not have enough funds available on your ledger, you will need to send money to BitPay's bank.

Initiate BitPay Payout: Once the necessary information is collected from your recipient, initiate the cryptocurrency payout using BitPay. BitPay will handle the process of converting the payout amount into the chosen cryptocurrency and sending it to the recipient's wallet address. Use the Create Payout API to initiate the payout. Any recipients that have not been invited yet will be invited at the same time. Any recipient that has already moved to the active status will receive their payout in the next batch processed.

Monitor BitPay Payout Status: Keep track of the payout status using BitPay's dashboard or API to ensure that the transaction is successful. To receive initial notifications about the payout status, use the Payouts Webhooks. For additional confirmations, use the Get Payout API documentation. The possible statuses are new, processing, error, and complete.

Legacy Behavior

In previous versions of the Payouts API, you had to invite a recipient, wait for them to complete their configuration, then separately create a payout to their account. This finish-to-start process ensured that BitPay did not attempt to deliver any payouts until your recipient could receive them. However, it created additional delays in inviting and monitoring recipients that did not fit all of our customer. Today, the API allows payout recipients to be invited at the time of payout creation, and for payouts to be sent to recipients of any status. To adhere to the legacy process, follow the steps below or use the optional skipInactive parameter when creating a payout.

1. Collect Information as above.

2. Send BitPay Invitations: Initiate invitations to your recipients using either the BitPay merchant dashboard OR the BitPay API. When you do this, BitPay will send an email invitation to the recipients. This will allow recipients to provide their wallet addresses securely. Refer to the Recipients API documentation for more information on this step.

3. Recipient Accepts Invitation and Monitor Status: Your recipients will need to accept the invitation, sign up or log in to their BitPay account, and submit their wallet address in their personal dashboard. To monitor the recipient's invitation status, use the Recipient Webhooks for real-time notifications, or check the "Recipients" tab in your merchant dashboard under "Payouts." Move on to Initiate BitPay Payout after receiving Webhook Notification Code 4004 recipient_active. Please note you will need to track recipientID for use in the next step.

4. Verify Funds Availability as above.

5. Initiate BitPay Payout: Once the necessary information is collected, initiate the cryptocurrency payout using BitPay. BitPay will handle the process of converting the payout amount into the chosen cryptocurrency and sending it to the recipient's wallet address. Use the Create Payout API to initiate the payout.

6. Monitor BitPay Payout Status as above.