Starting in Q3, DISH customers will have a new way to pay their bills.
Satellite television provider DISH Network Corporation has just announced that it will start accepting bitcoin, making it not only the first pay-TV service to do so–but also the largest company to date.
“We always want to deliver choice and convenience for our customers and that includes the method they use to pay their bills,” said Bernie Han, DISH executive vice president and chief operating officer. “Bitcoin is becoming a preferred way for some people to transact and we want to accommodate those individuals.”
DISH will manage the new cryptocurrency payments through bitcoin wallet Coinbase, who currently supports over 31,000 merchants.
Although DISH isn’t the first major goods and services provider to start accepting bitcoin (Overstock.com made a splash when they started accepting it back in January), it’s definitely the biggest. Bitcoin has also been deemed an authorized form of payment by a major American sports franchise, the NBA’s Sacramento Kings. As more businesses begin to accept bitcoin, sites like Yelp have started to highlight bitcoin acceptance on their business pages. Some (including Coinbase’s co-founder, of course) feel that we’re currently on a shifting payments landscape–one that’s tilting toward currencies like, but most specifically, bitcoin.
“We’re excited to support DISH and their current and new subscribers for their bitcoin transactions,” said Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam. “This is a large step forward in the growing momentum of customers paying companies in bitcoin for things we do every day, like watching premium TV.”
After hitting an all-time high of $1,126 last November, the price of bitcoin has fallen a bit–though there’s been a small surge as of the past week. The price currently stands at $571.
Image via Wikimedia Commons
