Software developer Laszlo Hanyecz arranged to buy two pizzas for 10,000 BTC, a trade widely cited as the first documented real‑world purchase using bitcoin. The event helped demonstrate that bitcoin could be used for everyday commerce, not only as a technical experiment.
Mt. Gox launched as a bitcoin-to-fiat exchange and price quoting service. Exchanges like Mt. Gox mattered for merchants because they made it easier to see a current bitcoin price and convert between bitcoin and national currencies.
BitPay was founded to make it easier for businesses to accept bitcoin payments without needing to manage the technical details of the Bitcoin network. This type of “payment processor” typically helped merchants by generating invoices and offering conversion to local currency, reducing volatility risk.
WordPress.com began accepting bitcoin payments using BitPay’s payment gateway. As a major online platform, WordPress’ decision was often treated as proof that a well-known internet business could add bitcoin checkout using a third-party processor.
Coinbase introduced a simple “Pay By Bitcoin” button and merchant tools designed to let websites accept bitcoin with minimal code. This lowered the barrier for small merchants and creators who wanted to test bitcoin payments without building a full checkout system from scratch.
Coinbase announced a pricing incentive that made bitcoin payment processing free up to a merchant’s first $1 million in orders (then 1% thereafter). This kind of promotion aimed to encourage businesses to try bitcoin payments by reducing the cost compared with traditional card processing.
Shopify announced an official integration that enabled its merchants to accept bitcoin payments through BitPay. This mattered because Shopify powered many small online stores, so one platform-level integration could extend bitcoin checkout to many merchants at once.
Overstock enabled bitcoin as a payment method and used Coinbase to handle the transaction flow. The move drew attention because Overstock was one of the first large, mainstream online retailers to add bitcoin checkout, helping move bitcoin payments beyond niche communities.
Online electronics retailer TigerDirect announced it would accept bitcoin and used BitPay for processing. Large retailers adopting processors helped normalize common merchant needs—like checkout integration and handling payment exceptions—within a bitcoin payment workflow.
Expedia began accepting bitcoin for hotel bookings, routing customers through Coinbase for payment. This was significant because travel purchases are higher-value than many early bitcoin transactions, testing how bitcoin worked for larger consumer checkouts.
Newegg partnered with BitPay to accept bitcoin on its e-commerce site. Adding bitcoin to a high-traffic electronics marketplace further demonstrated a repeatable pattern: a major merchant could plug in a specialized processor and offer bitcoin alongside cards and other methods.
Dell announced it would accept bitcoin for purchases on Dell.com in the United States, using Coinbase. This was another step in mainstream visibility for bitcoin checkout, and it highlighted a core value proposition for processors: converting bitcoin to dollars quickly to reduce volatility exposure for merchants.
Overstock expanded bitcoin payments beyond the U.S. to many international customers. This shift mattered because cross-border card payments often bring higher fees and fraud concerns, while bitcoin processors offered an alternative checkout path for international buyers.
Microsoft enabled bitcoin as a way to add funds to a Microsoft account for buying digital content such as apps and games. This was widely seen as a milestone because it brought bitcoin payments into a major consumer software ecosystem, even with limits such as no refunds after completion.
By 2015, early large merchants that had adopted bitcoin via processors reported mixed outcomes, but the overall period showed what merchant adoption required: easy plugins, predictable pricing, and operational support (like refunds policies and checkout exception handling). The 2010–2015 wave established the “payment processor” model as the main bridge between bitcoin’s blockchain and mainstream online checkout.
Bitcoin as a merchant payment option and early payment processors (2010–2015)