Should Businesses Accept Bitcoin?

By Bill Conerly

Bitcoin has strong opportunities for mainstream businesses, but it’s hard to understand from listening to techies explain it. Here is what a company’s management needs to know about Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is a better way to do transactions. Forget about Bitcoin as an investment vehicle, or Bitcoin as a way to end the Federal Reserve. Its benefit to business comes from payments.

If your payments are occasional and in large amounts, don’t bother with Bitcoin. Let’s say that you’re Boeing. Once or twice a day someone sends you $100,000,000 for an airplane. Stick with your current practices.

However, say you run a coffee shop with an average ticket of six dollars, and nobody carries cash. You can collect an electronic payment with zero cost per transaction.

Say you’re a dentist who takes plastic. Occasionally someone disputes payment with his credit card issuer because his tooth is still hurting. Not only do you lose money, but you lose valuable time dealing with the dispute.

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NEW PARTNERSHIP ALLOWS EUROPEAN BITCOIN MERCHANTS TO ACCEPT CREDIT AND DEBIT CARDS

By Gerrard Hartley

Vogogo is setting their sights on the European bitcoin market and all the untapped merchants it has to offer. By setting up a strategic business partnership with eMerchantPay, cryptocurrency merchants based in Europe can accept credit and debit card transactions from any customer in the world, as long as they utilize Vogogo and eMerchantPay. According to an official statement, the integration between eMerchantPay and Vogogo is well advanced, with Vogogo expecting a beta launch of their card processing later this month.

Vogogo and eMerchantPay Share Excitement for New Ventures

Vogogo CEO Geoff Gordon said of that the company is quite happy to make the announcement of their European expansion.

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Facebook, Spotify, Uber, Airbnb Can Now Accept Bitcoin after BitPay Deal

By Charlie Richards

Facebook, Spotify, and Airbnb are among thousands of merchants who may accept Bitcoin after Bitpay’s integration with giant payment processor Adyen.

Payment processing giant Adyen has announced the integration of popular Bitcoin processing platform BitPay into its checkout services. Merchants using Ayden's services will now be able to accept Bitcoin through a single preference check without any further modification of their own site's back-end.

Making the announcement early on February 3 to the International Business Times, BitPay will be hoping to see conversions among some of Adyen's 3,500 merchants globally including, Groupon, Evernote, Facebook, Spotify, Uber, Vodafone, Booking.com, Yelp, AirBnB, KLM, Abercrombie & Fitch, Soundcloud, Ryanair, etc.

Speaking to CoinTelegraph at the ICE Totally Gaming Bitcoin conference in London, BitPay's CCO Sonny Singh explained:

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BITCOIN TRADING VOLUME INCREASED FROM $15 BILLION TO $23 BILLION LAST YEAR

By Jonas Borchgrevink

Bitpay just sent us their smoking fresh infographic summoning up the year 2014 for Bitcoin. While the most discussed topic was the bitcoin price, there were clearly a lot more happening in 2014.

One of the most intriguing facts is the astounding growth of the bitcoin trading volume. It has increased from $15 billion in 2013 to $23 billion in 2014, a whopping 57% increase. While the amount of active wallets have increased to 7.95 million.

Bitpay writes:

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2015 Bitcoin Predication: The Transformation from Transaction to Investment Currency

By Gavin Smith, CEO First Global Credit

As 2014 draws to a close I find myself not just recalling the events of the past year but also looking ahead at the year to come.  2014 was a mixed year for Bitcoin; the ongoing post Mt Gox decline has fuelled the arguments of sceptics like Warren Buffet who “warned investors to stay away from Bitcoin, calling it “a mirage,” saying that, while it may be a better way of transmitting money, the “idea that it has some huge intrinsic value is just a joke.”

On the other hand merchant acceptance of Bitcoin has gone from strength to strength. This is no longer a collection of niche enthusiasts that accept bitcoin as a political statement; we have the “Standard Bearer” of merchants, Overstock integrating Bitcoin with their online payment systems as well as Microsoft, Expedia and Dell accepting Bitcoin as a way of increasing market share and accessibility to their customers.

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6 (More) Bitcoin Myths Debunked

We've all heard them before.

As a groundbreaking innovation, bitcoin naturally attracts skeptics just as strongly as it attracts supporters, and the technical and theoretical complexity of the digital currency can cause a considerable amount of confusion with those who are not 'in the know'.

The result is that critics of bitcoin oftentimes fall back on one or two euphemisms to express why they think it will never succeed – simplified statements like "bitcoin is a ponzi scheme" that higlight often misunderstood characteristics of the digital currency but rarely fully address the situation.

One of the first articles published on CoinDesk was dedicated to debunking these "bitcoin myths", and because they still pervade the industry, we're revisiting the topic.

Here are six (more) bitcoin myths, debunked.

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What are the advantages of Bitcoin?

The Advantages of Bitcoin

• Payment freedom - It is possible to send and receive any amount of money instantly anywhere in the world at any time. No bank holidays. No borders. No imposed limits. Bitcoin allows its users to be in full control of their money.
• Very low fees - Bitcoin payments are currently processed with either no fees or extremely small fees. Users may include fees with transactions to receive priority processing, which results in faster confirmation of transactions by the network. Additionally, merchant processors exist to assist merchants in processing transactions, converting bitcoins to fiat currency and depositing funds directly into merchants' bank accounts daily. As these services are based on Bitcoin, they can be offered for much lower fees than with PayPal or credit card networks.
• Fewer risks for merchants - Bitcoin transactions are secure, irreversible, and do not contain customers’ sensitive or personal information. This protects merchants from losses caused by fraud or fraudulent chargebacks, and there is no need for PCI compliance. Merchants can easily expand to new markets where either credit cards are not available or fraud rates are unacceptably high. The net results are lower fees, larger markets, and fewer administrative costs.
• Security and control - Bitcoin users are in full control of their transactions; it is impossible for merchants to force unwanted or unnoticed charges as can happen with other payment methods. Bitcoin payments can be made without personal information tied to the transaction. This offers strong protection against identity theft. Bitcoin users can also protect their money with backup and encryption.
• Transparent and neutral - All information concerning the Bitcoin money supply itself is readily available on the block chain for anybody to verify and use in real-time. No individual or organization can control or manipulate the Bitcoin protocol because it is cryptographically secure. This allows the core of Bitcoin to be trusted for being completely neutral, transparent and predictable.

Who Accepts Bitcoins As Payment? List of Companies, Stores, Shops

Who accept bitcoins as payment? Bitcoins are taking over the crypto-currency marketplace.

They’re the largest and most well-known digital currency. Many large companies are accepting bitcoins as a legitimate source of funds. They allow their online products to be bought with bitcoins. With the extreme facilitation of transfer and earning of bitcoins, it would be a mistake not to accept these new-found online coins as cash. 

With a fluctuating value, the funds can either help or hurt the company. This fluctuation of inflation can be a boon to business, unless the market is valuing the coins insanely high, sometimes reaching $1,000!

Many companies are accepting bitcoins, many are not. Here is a list of the biggest names who accepts bitcoins as a currency.

Click here for list 1

Click here for list 2

Click here for list 3

International List