Bitcoin and Retailers: Who Accepts the Virtual Currency?

After a massive surge in popularity in 2013 and the first half of 2014, bitcoin has been largely absent from the news headlines lately.

Source: flickr user Marc van der Chijs

However, over the past few months, the number of mainstream retailers that accept bitcoin has grown considerably. Here are some of the places where you can now spend your bitcoins just as easily as (or easier than) using a credit card.

1. Overstock.com -- Overstock was the first major retailer to start accepting bitcoin in early 2014, and the company has reported several million dollars in bitcoin sales. Overstock has recently expanded its acceptance of bitcoin to its international customers, and CEO Patrick Byrne expects bitcoin sales totaling between $6 million-$8 million by the end of the year.

2. PayPal -- Although it may be a while until bitcoin is fully integrated into PayPal and eBay , PayPal recently announced its partnership with bitcoin processors, which will allow merchants to accept bitcoin payments via PayPal.

This is definitely a step in the right direction, and maybe one day PayPal's 100 million active users will be able to store bitcoins in their PayPal accounts, which would go a long way toward the "mainstreaming" of the digital currency.

3. Dell -- The computing giant has been accepting bitcoin since July. Customers can shop on Dell's website just like they normally would, then choose bitcoin at checkout as their method of payment. They will then be sent to Coinbase's website (Dell's bitcoin partner) to complete their transaction.

4.CheapAir.com and Expedia -- The travel website CheapAir.com has been accepting bitcoin for flight bookings since November 2013, and later expanded its bitcoin acceptance to include hotel and railway bookings. In fact, CheapAir has seen so much success with bitcoin that it is going to start accepting some other virtual currencies as well.

Expedia has recently ventured into the bitcoin ecosystem, accepting the currency for hotel bookings from U.S. customers only. However, the company has suggested that it may expand this in the future.

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Bitcoin and Retailers: Who Accepts the Virtual Currency?