05 June 2014 / Payments Source – The two most popular Bitcoin services providers, Coinbase and BitPay, are neck-and-neck in signing up merchants to accept digital currency.
“Some [of the momentum] has to do with merchants realizing that there are large untapped populations that are showing an interest in Bitcoin and taking these consumers seriously,” says Gil Luria, an analyst with Los Angeles-based Wedbush Securities. “These are young enthusiastic tech-savvy consumers…that want to feel included and merchants can do that at a relatively low cost with a lot of benefits.”
Coinbase is building more of an all-encompassing closed ecosystem, providing both merchant and consumer services and products, says Luria.
Coinbase launched its merchant tools at the end of 2013 and since then has accumulated more than 32,000 merchants, says Adam White, director of business development and sales at Coinbase.
Dish Network Corp. recently began accepting Bitcoin through Coinbase. Dish is the biggest merchant so far to accept the decentralized digital currency.
Overstock.com, which began accepting Bitcoin in January through Coinbase, was the biggest merchant before Dish. The online retailer’s CEO, Patrick Byrne, is outspoken about his views of Wall Street corruption and the zombie apocalypse, for which he sees Bitcoin as the solution….. Read more
