With over 30,000 merchants, we are happy to announce SendOwl as one of our newest to sign up to accept bitcoin. We wanted to share a bit about this company and their reasoning for accepting bitcoin!

As of last week, more than 30,000 merchants now accept bitcoin using BitPay. One of our newest merchants, SendOwl, provides users with an easy and secure way to sell their digital creations online. They count indie game developers, self-help gurus and crochet-pattern sellers among their customers.

After a bad experience with a competitor, SendOwl chose BitPay as their bitcoin payment gateway – and haven't looked back since. Our integration with Shopify and many other platforms makes it easy for users to accept bitcoin through SendOwl.

Our goal at BitPay is to work with merchants like SendOwl to make it easy for businesses of all sizes and shapes to accept bitcoin. Established brands like TigerDirect, Gyft and The Sacramento Kings have already experienced the benefits of accepting bitcoin. However, consumers and small businesses are becomingly increasingly interested in the benefits of this global currency with its low transaction costs.

Australian cartoonist Stuart McMillen, a SendOwl customer, decided to start accepting bitcoin because of customer demand. He says, “I felt I was losing potential revenue by continuing to ignore this payment method. Previously I was accepting payments via PayPal and credit card only. Bitcoins are now becoming a mainstream payment method for internet transactions.”

Matthias Müller, a visual effects producer and SendOwl customer, suggests that bitcoin has a valuable role to play in the global economy, “I think cryptocurrencies like bitcoin can help to bring back some variety and freedom to the way we run our economy…. I think over the course of the next ten years the market capitalization of cryptocurrencies will increase significantly.”

SendOwl star seller Mark Morris, whose company Introversion Software produces the hugely popular Prison Architect game, goes even further in his enthusiasm for bitcoin: “When I first heard about bitcoins I got really excited. I feel that the idea has the potential to be the most significant advancement since the creation of the internet itself. Bitcoins are the first truly universal currency and will allow people in the poorest and worst governed countries the ability to partake in the global marketplace and I truly think that this change will ultimately be revolutionary in the widest possible context of the world.”

Although only in its infancy, it’s clear that bitcoin is already changing the way we do business. And it’s our goal at BitPay to make it as easy as possible for people all over the world to price and pay in bitcoin. Companies like SendOwl are helping us do this. Last week, an Australian cartoonist, British games developer, and German visual effects producer started pricing their goods in bitcoin with the help of SendOwl and BitPay. Next week, who knows? As Mark Morris says, the impact of bitcoin will be revolutionary.