Earlier this year, TigerDirect garnered headlines when it announced that it would become one of the major electronics retailers to accept the peer-to-peer decentralized virtual currency bitcoin. The adoption of bitcoin has been a success – it has reported bitcoin sales of $1 million – and now it is expanding its bitcoin prevalence north of the border.
The popular electronics merchant confirmed in a press release Tuesday that it would be offering its Canadian customers the option for paying for their items in the digital currency. The online retailer will be partnering with BitPay, a bitcoin payment processor. All of the website’s customers can make purchases with bitcoin on its tablet and mobile websites, too.
This latest move will make TigerDirect the biggest retailer in Canada to adopt bitcoin.
“We are very pleased with our BitPay implementation on TigerDirect.com and are excited to roll it out across our other sites. As of today, TigerDirect.ca and our mobile/tablet sites will be accepting bitcoin as a payment method,” said Steven Leeds, Director of Marketing for TigerDirect, in a statement.
Leeds also told CoinDesk in an interview that there has been a strong demand in Canada for bitcoin payments. “The demand has remained constant with bitcoin purchasing on our TigerDirect.com site. The demand has not just been in products, it’s also been in social outreach. We’ve been in contact with our reddit community, and they’ve been asking us when this was going to be rolled out in Canada.”
TigerDirect participated in an Ask Me Anything event on Reddit and one of the highest rated questions was: “When will you be accepting bitcoin orders for Canadian customers.” The company responded: “HOW DOES RIGHT NOW SOUND??”
This won’t be the only bitcoin measure TigerDirect will make. It is incorporating bitcoins into its business model and the company has already designed a “long-term road map” for the cryptocurrency.
