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Popular user-driven merchant listing app Yelp has reportedly added an option to accept cryptocurrency.

As reported recently by BreakerMag, popular merchant listing and user review app Yelp has added an option for filtering businesses. Yelp is a user-driven service which allows businesses to submit and claim their own listings, but also relies heavily on users to report listing inaccuracies, update specific features, and, most importantly, leave reviews, including commenting on the cryptocurrency usage experience. Yelp is a highly popular app globally with more than 10 million downloads around the world to date. The cryptocurrency option is not yet available on the app’s desktop site.

Craiglist, a widely popular classified advertisement service, also includes an option for sellers to indicate that they will accept payment in part or full in cryptocurrency for goods and services.

So we recently launched this new Dash merchant and services discover app! I'll just leave this here. 😇https://t.co/5mEXy98lZA — Really Bad Apps (@really_bad_apps) April 17, 2019

Users on mainstream sites may still struggle to use their cryptocurrency

While the inclusion of a filter for cryptocurrency-accepting businesses for Yelp is a promising step towards mainstream adoption, several important challenges remain before the usefulness of this feature is maximized. First, the accuracy and reliability of this data may be vary widely, with users misidentifying participating businesses or merchants ceasing accepting cryptocurrency for a variety of reasons, including management changes, price volatility, and network conditions. Second, due to the wide range of cryptocurrencies and users in existence, a holder of one coin may not be sure that they can spend it at a given location, which could potentially accept or exclude any number of different coins. As both the most well-known cryptocurrency as well as the one with the consistently highest fees and confirmation times, Bitcoin has the potential to paradoxically be both the default option and the most frustrating user experience at supporting businesses.

For its part, Craigslist currently displays few listings that claim to accept cryptocurrencies for payment, and among those that do many have been shown to be incorrect. This may be in part due to the ability to reach more potential buyers through advertising extra features, whether or not they actually apply.

How to Easily Find Businesses That Accept Bitcoin Cash Near You The Marco Coino #app maps the location of brick and mortar stores where you can pay with #BitcoinCash (#BCH). Read more: https://t.co/vjvLopDCo2 pic.twitter.com/eM1seQJ9ji — Bitcoin.com Official (@BitcoinCom) April 23, 2019

Dash and Bitcoin Cash’s dedicated merchant listings leave less ambiguity

The addition of cryptocurrency listing options to more mainstream services is at present in competition with smaller, dedicated listing sites and apps. Dash maintains Discover Dash, a merchant listing site and Android app which lists all known Dash-accepting merchants worldwide, a number which at present approaches 5,000. Bitcoin.com, meanwhile, maintains a barebones listing site and mobile app for Android and iPhone called Marco Coino which currently lists 866 Bitcoin Cash-accepting merchants around the world.

Both these apps list specific segments of the global cryptocurrency merchant scene, which by nature excludes all others, however which presents data which is more accurate and useful to customers seeking to use a particular currency without guesswork. Depending on which direction global cryptocurrency adoption takes, that of a coin-universal or a coin-specific approach, will decide the relative usefulness of these listings versus more mainstream listings such as Yelp.