Digital cryptocurrency payments are now accepted by the city of Williston especially for utility bills. Finance director Hercules Cummings explained about their partnership with Microsoft and Facebook for the largest virtual payment merchant. And also added that they are the first municipality in the state of North Dakota and the third in the nation to offer this service.

Some of the features available in this partnership currently are only utility bills can be paid with cryptocurrency. In future, quality assessments will be conducted and evaluated before migrating other landfills, permits and licenses and bills. The city of Williston accepts money in the form of cash, check, credit card and automatic payment plan(ACH) methods. Citizens can sign up for generating their utility bills and statements automatically. Future plan is to include more payment methods such as google pay, apple pay and pay by text and during the end of the year planning to introduce PayPal and Venmo and other additional options. Bitpay is planning to charge a 1% transaction fee while there are discounts for people who pay using cryptocurrency.

Individuals who wish to pay their utility bills might need to visit the official website and do the following process

?     Click on pay your account bill and Enter account information to receive an emailed Bitpay invoice.

?     Select the digital wallet and desired cryptocurrency.

?     Fill in payment details.

?     Validate the transaction

To avoid any volatility risks, BitPay uses modern technology to convert the bitcoin into fiatcoin. IN this way, the transaction is at a locked-in exchange rate. Using this individuals will be able to create a digital wallet directly with BitPay or via another service such as Coinbase or Binance. The main aim of Williston is to embrace technological changes and create new innovation by accepting new technologies and driving value to our citizens.

Shivangi Mujumdar

CBW - External Analyst

INDIA