Pay Billing Hotel With Bitcoin

Hotels and property
One of the dreams of the cryptocurrency community is to be able to travel – across borders, perhaps –and to be able to pay in bitcoin. This would avoid having to visit currency exchanges and pay their commissions and fees, while also avoiding the need to carry much cash around. Now the dream is starting to take off, with notable names starting to welcome bitcoin onboard.
Most notably, Expedia has announced it will soon accept bitcoin for all hotel bookings, making it the first major travel company to accept payments in cryptocurrency. Expedia said bitcoin will be integrated into the payment options for customers at check-out, sitting alongside payment methods like PayPal and Visa. If all goes well, the company says it may expand the payments option to other areas of its business, including flights.
A Holiday Inn hotel in Brooklyn, New York, is now accepting bitcoin payments in a pilot programme overseen by by bitcoin entrepreneur Charlie Shrem. The Park Slope Holiday Inn Express is located on Union Street in Brooklyn and bitcoin reservations are possible either by phone, online or in person. Again, if the pilot goes well, the chain should open up more hotels to bitcoin paying customers.
Offering international investors the chance to buy UK properties with an extensive range of digital currencies, including bitcoin, Cai-Capital claims to be the first UK firm providing this facility. Targeting markets such as China, Russia and the Middle East, the Cheltenham-based company, which works in partnership with estate agent Hill-Mathieson & Partners, hopes that cryptocurrency payments will draw in new customers for the company’s sales, letting and property management services.

Bars and restaurants
Bars and restaurants that accept bitcoin remain the exception, rather than the rule. Luckily they’re usually great places to go. If you’re determined to spend your digital currency on a plate of fish and chips, or a cold beer, there are easy ways to find out where you can go.
Bitcoin Travel is a respected site, offering a mappable list of accommodation, apartments, attractions, bars, and beauty salons around the world. Coinmap also maintains a worldwide database of establishments.
If you’re in London, UK, the Pembury Tavern is well known, as is the Old Fitzroy pub if you’re in Sydney, Australia. If you make it to Tokyo, you’ll find local bitcoiners dining out on bitcoin at The Pink Cow.
For those who happen to be both peckish and located in London, a quick snack can be had for both bitcoin and dogecoin at the Burger Bear stall, which sells a range of artisan burgers and also caters for parties and events. The business has also just completed a crowdfunding campaign for more permanent establishment in the near future too.
When it comes to food and drink, there are other ways to spend bitcoins, even if a restaurant doesn’t directly accept them.
Foodler, a site enabling you to browse and order delivery and take-out meals from restaurants across the globe, has over 13,000 restaurants in 3,150 cities on its books. You can use bitcoins to pay for ‘Foodler credits’, which can be used at any of the restaurants.
Interestingly, we are starting to see nascent clusters of bitcoin-friendly establishments. For example, the Bitcoin-Kiez in Berlin is persuading local establishments in small numbers along the Graefekiez there to support bitcoin.
Similarly, in the Netherlands, all of the businesses (nine restaurants and an art gallery) along two canal-side streets in the centre of the Hague have collectively started to accept bitcoin. Unofficially the two streets running along the canal – Bierkade and Groenewegje – have also changed their name to ‘Bitcoin Boulevard’.

Payment platforms
Another development that has recently seen large numbers of merchants joining the bitcoin space en masse is the adoption of the digital currency by payments platform providers. These companies offer businesses the ability to easily accept payments from customers by a variety of means, such as credit/debit cards and PayPal. The good news for the crypto community is that they are also starting to roll out bitcoin services too. The merchant may not necessarily have made the bitcoin functionality live on their stores yet, but many will have and more are bound to follow.
Popular e-commerce platform Shopify added a bitcoin payment option for its sellers in late 2013. With a base of over 70,000 online stores, the number of goods that can potentially be purchased with bitcoin suddenly expanded significantly. Strangely, finding them is not currently very easy, because the Shopify.com marketplace page no longer exists, however there is a list of 75 stores now accepting BTC on their blog.
Commerce-as-a-service solutions provider Digital River, a company that processed more than $30bn in online transactions in 2013, announced in June that it was adding bitcoin as a payment option for its online merchants. The offering is now available to merchants using the Minnesota-based company’s SWREG solution for small and mid-sized businesses.
Similarly, Mollie, a payments platform in the Benelux region has potentially opened up over 10,000 merchants to bitcoin buyers.

Buying services with bitcoin
US satellite service provider DISH Network announced that it will start accepting bitcoin payments later this year. The Colorado-based company is one of the biggest content providers in America, with more than 14 million pay-TV subscribers. DISH says bitcoin payments will be made available to all customers who decide to make one-time payments on mydish.com starting in the third quarter of 2014, but it has not yet revealed an exact date. Once it does, it will become the biggest company to accept bitcoin to date. Last year DISH Network Corporation reported revenue of $13.9bn. The company has more than 30,000 employees.
Following its successful test with bitcoin micropayments provider BitWall back in February, the Chicago Sun-Times has announced that it has partnered with San Francisco-based bitcoin startup Coinbase to accept bitcoin payments for subscriptions. The announcement makes the Sun-Times the first US newspaper to accept bitcoin as a payment option.
North Carolina-based cloud parking solutions provider PassportParking has been allowing parking operators to accept bitcoin payments for purchases for some time now. The company said that in doing so it will be the first company to facilitate bitcoin acceptance in exchange for parking at metered spaces and lots. The company serves 75 clients in 35 US states, who now have the option to enroll in the service.
A property listings site in the US gives a discount to users who advertise on the site and pay in bitcoin. The listings site, called RentHop, is offering landlords and agents who advertise properties in New York a discount of up to 60% if they pay for their adverts in bitcoin. RentHop customers pay for ads with credits purchased from the site.
How about paying for education with bitcoin? Orlando, Florida-based online interactive education specialist Treehouse now accepts bitcoin for its subscription web design and web development education services. The firm, which to date has raised $24.6m through six funding rounds, boasts 70,000 students who use the platform to learn valuable skills in languages and software such as Android, CSS, HTML, Java, jQuery, iOS and Ruby, among others.
And if you’re looking for friends or love, OKCupid, the matchmaking site, began accepting bitcoin payment way in April 2103, making it an extremely early adopter as far as large companies go. With four million users as of 2013, OKCupid is part of IAC, a media and Internet company whose holdings include Ask.com, Vimeo and Match.com. While OKCupid boasts of being “completely free,” it also offers an “A-List” premium subscription which can be paid in cryptocurrency.