Steam To Accept Bitcoin via Third Party Processor

The news that Steam is going to start accepting Bitcoin is rather interesting.  Valve is not going to ever hold any Bitcoin themselves, rather they are going to begin working with a third-party payment processor to accept Bitcoin payments for games.  This is no different from how they handle your credit card payments though – they don’t keep that information themselves, a third-party processor holds it.  It is interesting that they are even contemplating working with a company to accept payments through Bitcoin.  Is this the reason for the recent price jump?

Over on Steam Databases’ Twitter it was made public a few hours ago.  Further investigation has shown that the news is being proliferated out to publishers on the service via e-mail notification.

This is great news for those interested in spending their Bitcoin on something.  Anything.  While Bitcoin has never been more popular than today, it is still tough to find interesting to you stuff to buy with it.  Sure, you could go through other companies that will sell you a gift card to your store of choice, or sell your Bitcoin to another person that wants it, or simply forget about it and let your money sit.

There is no information about how deep this integration with Bitcoin will go.  Will users be able to use the cryptocurrency to only purchase full games?  Will users be able to purchase extras in games using the digital currency?

Who could be next in accepting Bitcoin?  I can almost guarantee it won’t be Apple and their iTunes app as they are still staunchly against Bitcoin apps.  Google could be a big game changer if they began offering Bitcoin integration for their Android platform.  Who do you want to see begin accepting Bitcoin?

Steam is just the latest of many “big name” companies to turn a kind eye towards Bitcoin.  Other companies of interest that accept Bitcoin include Virgin Intergalactic, Tesla Motor Company and Microsoft.

Source: Steam Database Twitter