Yelp adds ‘accepts cryptocurrency’ option for merchant search

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It may not seem like a big deal at first glance, but it is another example of cryptocurrency entering the mainstream on a number of different levels. Popular review site Yelp now allows viewers to sort merchant search results by “Accepts Cryptocurrency,” giving recognition to crypto and putting it out in front of the site’s 30 million visitors.

California-based Yelp is one of the most commonly used sites in the U.S. for looking up information on businesses. Whether it’s to see what others have to say about the business or to find locations or operating hours, Yelp has quickly gained a significant place in the web life of netizens, and recorded 30 million unique visits from mobile platforms during the last quarter of 2018.

The popularity of the application has the potential to not only allow viewers to enhance their results, but it could also prove to be an important factor in the adoption of digital currency by merchants. Not only is awareness increased by the presence of the search option, but if retailers believe that they could be losing clients to those competitors who accept crypto, they will be more inclined to update their payment solutions to receive digital currencies, as well.

In addition to now being seen on Yelp, retail adoption on some level or another continues to spread. A payment processing startup, Moon, has announced that it has created a solution that allows Bitcoin Core (BTC) to be used on Amazon. The solution incorporates a browser extension to link a BTC wallet to the Moon interface and, as with all browser extensions, it needs to be monitored to ensure it functions as anticipated.

Widespread, mass adoption of digital currencies is still not here and it will take some time for crypto to be seen by the majority of retailers and consumers. However, the Bitcoin industry is making progress on a daily basis and it’s only a matter of time before crypto is embraced permanently on a global level. To say that awareness has exploded in the past 12 months would be an understatement and the Bitcoin industry has made more progress in a year than virtually any industry has ever made in 10-20 years.