Leading Bitcoin payment processer Coinbase had a number of announcements at last week’s IRCE event in Chicago. The Bitcoin firm partnered with travel platform Expedia.com to offer Bitcoin support for travel arrangements, as well as announcing its new merchant discount program.
The partnership with Expedia.com brings Bitcoin acceptance to the travel industry allowing for the payment of hotel reservations and bookings using the cryptocurrency. While this is not the first time we have witnessed BTC being accepted for travel arrangements, with Spanish travel platform Destina.com supporting Bitcoin for hotels, flights, and train tickets, this is the largest travel platform we have seen taking the plunge into digital currencies.
“We're continually looking at ways consumers want to pay for their travel; bitcoin is a great example of how Expedia is investing early in an array of payment options to give our customers and partners more choice in the ways they interact with us," said Michael Gulmann, Vice President, Expedia Global Product.
Coinbase’s BTC payment solution will join Expedia’s already supported array of payment options, including Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, JCB, Diners Club and PayPal. Like the other payment options, customers simply choose to pay with Bitcoin during the checkout process; afterwards they are redirected to Coinbase’s secure payment page.
"By accepting bitcoin as a form of payment, Expedia is giving a wider community of users the opportunity to book hotels from their site's inventory of properties all around the world quickly and easily," said Fred Ehrsam, co-founder of Coinbase.
In addition to the new partnership, the Bitcoin processor also announced a new feature for its merchants in the form of “Merchant Discounts”. The feature enables supporting Coinbase merchants to apply a percentage-based discount to all Bitcoin orders up to 25%.
“Bitcoin significantly reduces transaction fees and costs associated with fraud and chargebacks. And now, merchants can share these savings with consumers by enabling instant discounts on orders paid in bitcoin,” stated a Coinbase blog-post.
At this year’s IRCE, among the immense amount of Ecommerce and payment solutions, digital currencies were also heavily represented. Top Bitcoin payment solution firms Coinbase and Bitpay presented their solutions, and according to the attention at their respective booths, they showed that Bitcoin in Ecommerce is one of the most promising innovations in the industry.
