ICE Will Start Testing Its Bitcoin Payment App With Starbucks

ICE will start testing its new consumer-facing BTC payment application by making a partnership with Starbucks to bring the app to life as we are reading further in the latest Bitcoin news.

The Intercontinental Exchange is eying the first half of 2020 to start testing the new payment app. The financial market’s company marks its first entry into the world of digital assets by launching the Bakkt platform which offers physically-settled Bitcoin futures. When ICE announced Bakkt in 2018, it also announced that they will be working with Starbucks and Microsoft on multiple products that will promote adoption.

According to a report in Bloomberg, ICE will start testing the bitcoin consumer payment application and the company that will help the testing phase will be the new partner- Starbucks. ICE which also owns the New York Stock Exchange will start the testing phase of the application in early 2020. Mike Blandina who is the chief product officer at the ICE-owned Bakkt, explained in a blog post that the company is set to ‘unlock the value of digital assets.’’ it aims to do this via the consumer payments and he explained:

 “Our vision is to provide a consumer platform for managing a digital asset portfolio, whether they wish to store, transact, trade or transfer their assets.”

Blandina added that ICE has even formed a strong team with high expertise in payments. It is now much closer to complete what the executive describes as its core payments and compliance platform and they will now focus on developing a merchant portal and consumer application. Bakkt was exciting for many when it was first announced last year. The entry of ICE on the market was seen as incredibly bullish but the performance of the platform was a major disappointment for a lot of the Bitcoin proponents. The interest in the platform’s physically-settled Bitcoin futures appeared far lower than most people believed to be.

The platform also had a very slow start but now the interest is increasing. A total of 1,183 of the contracts, represented a total of $10.3 million traded on Friday. This is now a big number compared to the trading volumes reported at other crypto exchanges since the average trading volume of the 23 days preceding the all-time high was less than $1.05 million.