Topic: What is the reason behind the surge of merchants accepting Bitcoin in 2014? - page 3. (Read 2781 times)

For certain business entity especially large corporations, they don't really mind trying to compete even committing huge investment just for the sake of slight advantage over others and that is especially for their competitors. They stay by their motto of staying ahead in business. That is how I see it.

I think it's just a natural progression, but I think there was a disappointing number of big companies getting involved both last and this year. I think the adoption rate will pick up at some point (hopefully) but it's been very slow in my opinion. I think there's much more smaller companies adopting bitcoin and those are just as important in my opinion so we shouldn't forget them.

You are missing something that is needed here. That's is time (even though it is non existent, but that's a different matter). Nobody could expect a big company to adopt Bitcoin, half a year or even a year after Bitpay. Even though they're protecting the marchants, that's not enough. You don't just go around the internet and adopt any payment option that you see. Even today, there is a lot of misunderstanding when it comes to the use of Bitcoin.
Overstock was the first "big" company that started accepting Bitcoin. One could have expected that there would be a boost in sale which stagnated afterwards. This helped out in a way. Everyone who doesn't accept it kind of stays behind and missed a possible market.
I definitely think that adoption will continue, maybe even on a quicker pace. I don't see it reaching a plateau because there are so many merchants in the world that could start adopting it.

The main reason might be simply the often ignored ethical sense present in most people, even in people with decision power in companies.

True, but wouldn't you think that as the list of companies grows, the positive effects become less and less significant? Being the second mainstream merchant to accept BTC is a big deal. Being the sixteenth? Not so much.

Well a few reasons I could think of. If your competitor are offering payment solutions in bitcoin, and you are not, then it makes sense to do the same in order to catch up with the trend. Furthermore, accepting bitcoin also helps to promote businesses. For instance, a company which decides to accept bitcoin will get added to the "list of sites" and indirectly that is a free promotion. Bitcoiners will also tend to support by trying out the service.

It's fashionable and most bitcoin holders are "solvent", I guess.

In 2014, a huge number of mainstream companies jumped in and began accepting Bitcoin. The trend seems to have started with Overstock announcing in December 2013 that they were going to accept Bitcoin payments by January 2014. Before then, a few merchants already accepted BTC such as WordPress.com, Reddit, and Kim Dotcom's Mega but no mainstream retailer accepted payments in BTC. After Overstock's announcement, many other companies also announced that they were going to accept BTC payments including TigerDirect, Dell, Expedia, NewEgg, Microsoft, and DISH Network (not in that order).

At first, I assumed it was due to the rise of payment processing services like BitPay and Coinbase which shield merchants against the risk of BTC/USD price volatility by automatically converting any coins received into fiat since the use of such payment processors is something that these companies all have in common. However, BitPay was founded in 2011 and Coinbase was founded in 2012 so that doesn't explain it.

The only other explanation I could think of is that Overstock's announcement of Bitcoin integration provided such a boost to sales that it served as an example to the market and so other companies also followed suit. Their marketing departments saw how services such as BitPay could allow them to accept BTC with no risk to them since they would still be getting the same old fiat in the end. Meanwhile, they would benefit from the positive publicity as well as increased sales from Bitcoiners.

What do you think? Do you think this the only reason or are there other factors at play? And now that accepting Bitcoin is no longer viewed as "groundbreaking" as it used to be, do you think the trend of ever-increasing merchant adoption will continue into 2015 and the coming years or have we reached a plateau?