With BitCoin skyrocketing to more than $32,000 USD per BTC, cryptocurrency has dominated the news for an extended period. Cryptocurrency mining has impacted even the availability of commodities like high end gaming graphics cards and has been cited often as the currency to pay off ransomware as well as other “eyebrow raising” transactions. With certain industries leading the way in what many previously consider a somewhat shady currency, the reality is that cryptocurrency is working its way into mainstream money matters with more traditional companies beginning to accept BTC and other cryptocurrencies as legal tender. Team Zeta recognized the significant opportunities to enable businesses to leverage such payment mediums as cryptocurrency to buy and sell. This has the potential to circumvent limitations such as certain government regulations where mainstream payment methods may be prohibitive for doing business. As such, the goal of Team Zeta was to develop a proof of concept that such payment gateways can be applied to Acumatica to enable payment to vendors and from customers to settle bills and invoices with non-traditional banking methods, such as cryptocurrency. The initial POC need only prove that a financial transaction is possible, not to be an extensive implementation given the time constraints of the Hackathon. The implications, if proven, show that any gateway with a compatible API could be applied to Acumatica to facilitate a vastly more robust payables and receivables settlement than available today in the standard product.
To achieve the proof of concept, a selection of API’s providing the ability to integrate BitCoin and DogeCoin as currencies and payment methods was reviewed. While one API was selected, several were found to be reasonably capable at various costs and considerations. It was determined that Acumatica is capable currently of defining a currency, managing exchange rates, and defining a payment method for cryptocurrency, so the team set out to establish fields for wallet information with cryptocurrency in compliance with the requirements of the API. A feature to check the balance of the wallet was applied to the Cash Account screen, and the AP Payment process was extended to initiate the transfer with the payment gateway for the selected cryptocurrency. Success was defined (and achieved) as the successful interaction with the cryptocurrency wallet to check balance and initiate a payment transaction. Limitations of the free account for the payment gateway selected limited further processing to complete the second stage of the payment transaction within the payment gateway. However, the basic objective of the proof of concept was achieved.