Travelers Can Now Use Bitcoin To Book Reservations Through Expedia

Planning a trip? Don’t worry about pulling our your credit card to reserve that hotel room, Expedia is now accepting bitcoin as a form of payment.

Expedia announced Wednesday that it partnered with bitcoin transaction processor Coinbase to give consumers more options when paying for their reservations, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

To pay with bitcoin, consumers simply select the payment option during check-out and are then redirected to Coinbase.com to complete the transaction.

“By accepting bitcoin as a form of payment, Expedia is giving a wider community of users the opportunity to book hotels from their site’s inventory of properties all around the world quickly and easily,” Fred Ehrsam, co-founder of Coinbase says in a news release.

Expedia joins an ever-growing list of companies jumping on the bitcoin bandwagon.

In late May, Dish Network announced it would use Coinbase to begin accepting bitcoin payments from customers beginning July 1.

Although, bitcoin is not backed by a government or central bank, several companies, including Overstock.com, Zynga and the Sacramento Kings, accept the virtual currency as a form of legal tender.

However, skepticism about the cryptocurrency from the U.S. government and others has continued to grow after the bankruptcy of Mt. Gox, the one-time biggest player on the bitcoin exchange scene. It stopped trading in February after hackers cracked its computer system and stole nearly half a billion dollars worth of the currency.

The Securities and Exchange Commission warned early adopters of bitcoin that the cryptocurrency is prime for scammers and other ne’er-do-wells looking to take advantage of people,

For more on the basic facts of bitcoin, check out our guide to the virtual currency.

Travel site Expedia now accepts bitcoin to book hotels [The San Francisco Chronicle]

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