Facebook and Groupon Move Closer to Bitcoin Integration
Adyen, one of the world’s top online payment processors, has just signed on to integrate Bitcoin payments into their systems through Bitcoin payment processor BitPay. This agreement will allow over 3,500 merchants worldwide to join over 100k merchants currently accepting Bitcoin all over the globe.
Facebook & Groupon Lead Adyen’s List of Clients
Among the top online names who use Adyen and can start accepting Bitcoin in the immediate future include Facebook, Groupon, Airbnb, Spotify, and Ryanair. Adyen has access to four of the Internet’s top five companies overall.
“Interest in bitcoin continues to grow among merchants,” said Roelant Prins, chief commercial officer at Adyen. “As a business focused on merchant needs, we are excited to give merchants the ability to accept bitcoin payments securely.”
According to BitPay, more than 100,000 merchants now accept Bitcoin, worldwide, and 53% of them use BitPay for their digital currency payment processing. BitPay already supports bitcoin payments for a number of high-profile companies, including Microsoft, Gyft and WordPress. This follows the successful “Bitcoin Bowl” on December 26th, 2014, exposing over three million mainstream TV viewers to Bitcoin for the first time on national television in the U.S.
“Merchants using Adyen and BitPay will receive all the advantages of working with a stable, scalable payments platform. Bitcoin is being seamlessly integrated into the Adyen payments flow, reporting, and settlement,” said Tony Gallippi, BitPay’s co-founder and executive chairman. “Adyen is a great company and a great partner to help expand bitcoin adoption worldwide.”
It opens the door for two of the world’s largest online platforms, Facebook and Groupon, to seamlessly integrate Bitcoin into their payment infrastructure as early as this week.
Many would assume that signing bigger and bigger merchants, like Microsoft, would increase US Dollar values of Bitcoin. Usually, the opposite happens, as merchants convert Bitcoin back to dollars at the close of the day’s business. Larger merchants accepting Bitcoin means more Bitcoin payments converted to fiat, and the sell-off of Bitcoin lowers dollar values. To the novice, this dollar value is paramount and represents Bitcoin’s inherent worth, but this is not the case. At least, any more than the Internet’s value is rated by the amount of fax machines and postage stamps it has replaced.
What’s next for Bitcoin integration? Do you expect Facebook, Groupon, and others to accept it this month? Share above and comment below.
