Yelp starts listing Bitcoin-friendly businesses
If you’re looking for business listings there’s few better resources than Yelp. You can find out a businesses’ opening hours, its location, read reviews and a whole lot more besides. And now, you can also find out whether or not a particular business accepts Bitcoin.
Yelp has just announced a new “accepts Bitcoin” attribute on its business listing page. Business owners can let their customers know they accept the cryptocurrency simply by logging into business owner tools and updating their payment attributes.
Bitcoin may be on a bit of a roller-coaster ride of late, what with some politicians praising it while others call for it to be banned, its value plummeting then rising, and trading exchanges imploding. But these ups and downs haven’t stopped its progress, and Bitcoin is rapidly maturing into an accepted form of payment.
It could be that Yelp’s decision is even bigger than recent moves like Microsoft adding a Bing currency conversion feature for bitcoins, or Overstock.com’s decision to accept the digital funny money. After all, Yelp’s move could end up actually encouraging businesses to start accepting Bitcoin as a way to differentiate themselves – in much the same way as other options like offering delivery services and being ‘pet friendly’ do.
screenshot via Yelp
For those who actually use Bitcoin, the update is a most welcome addition. Dozens of people like to check out Yelp reviews before they actually use a business’ services, and those who see one that accepts Bitcoin might be more tempted to pay a visit. It’s worth mentioning that Yelp has something like 100 million unique visitors too, and so this is surely going to raise awareness – both customers and business owners will be intrigued and start looking into what Bitcoin is, further accelerating its adoption.
Bitcoin offers a number of advantages too, not least the lack of expensive credit card fees and its easy convenience. But whether or not Yelp users will actually chose one business over another just because it accepts Bitcoin remains to be seen.
Main photo credit: scottks1 via photopin cc
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