Services like Coinbase and BitPay have been quite the godsend for businesses looking to accept bitcoin.
Their services allow merchants to accept the digital currency and instantly convert it back to the fiat currency of their choice — but some in the community disagree with the method, stating that businesses that accept bitcoin should at least keep some of it to support the bitcoin economy.
(Take Overstock.com, for example. The company recently stated that they keep ten percent of their bitcoin income as bitcoin.)
So why shouldn’t others follow suit?
Coinbase announced today that merchants will now be able to specify a percentage of bitcoin to keep in their accounts. The rest, as one would imagine, would be instantly converted to fiat as normal.
The team writes on the company’s official blog:
“…as the bitcoin ecosystem is maturing, every day we’re seeing more and more merchants starting to accept bitcoin. It is starting to make more sense to keep some part (or all) of your orders in bitcoin and use it to pay your vendors or other merchants, to completely avoid any exchange/banking fees.”
It’s a great move forward in supporting this economy.
Merchants who are interesting in opting into the feature simply need to log into their merchant settings dashboard and check off the “Maintain a minimum balance in BTC when exchanging” in the payouts section.