American cell network operator AT&T has announced it’s accepting cryptocurrency as an online payment option.
AT&T says it will be offering the payment method through cryptocurrency payment services provider BitPay. The mobile carrier will allow customers to pay their bills online in supported cryptocurrency, although it doesn’t say which. However, as the payment service is offered by BitPay, it’s likely all major coins will be catered for.
It also claims it’s the first major US mobile carrier to provide a cryptocurrency payment options to customers.
That said, AT&T isn’t the first company to use BitPay to offer its customers cryptocurrency payments.
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Numerous organizations including, electronics distributor Avnet, and Ohio’s government, have used BitPay to accept cryptocurrency-based payments.
While Avnet claims it received a number of high-value cryptocurrency payments soon after introducing the payment option, it’s not always the case.
In April last year, adult site Pornhub announced that users could subscribe to its premium content and pay with digital assets like TRON and Verge token – for the record Pornhub wasn’t using BitPay. However, by September, less than 1 percent of users had actually paid with cryptocurrency, the adult site told Hard Fork.
Stepping off the internet and into the real world, Hard Fork found that a locksmith in the UK first offered Bitcoin payments to customers four years ago. As of February this year, it was still waiting for its first customer to pay with Bitcoin.
Indeed, for some AT&T customers it might be a useful option to pay in cryptocurrency, although the trend would suggest most won’t use it.
If it was me though, I wouldn’t want to do anything that might connect one of my Bitcoin addresses to my phone number or other personal details. It’s kind of not the point of cryptocurrency.
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