The growing acceptance of Bitcoin (BTC) as an acceptable online virtual digital currency by companies has been demonstrated once again by Core4Solutions, which is now among the first enterprise-level IT hardware resellers to accept BTC as a payment method.

Customers of the IT hardware reseller can now go directly to the Core4Solutions’ website to find and purchase products using the Bitcoin virtual currency; the value of which has been on the rise towards the end of the year. While many multinational corporations (MNCs) and corporate treasuries will naturally be wary of accepting an untried developing currency in this early stage of its development, especially when security and money laundering concerns proliferate, the fact is that many smaller firms - in the technology world and elsewhere - are already accepting the virtual currency and at its current rate of progress it may soon begin to impinge upon big business.

Core 4 Solutions is a relatively small electronic e-commerce based IT hardware reseller founded in 2011, but it is typical of the sort of tech start-up firm that is adopting BTC, alongside coffee shops in Berlin and other physical offline businesses. Core4Solutions already ships to more than 80 countries worldwide, and are expecting to expand further by allowing customers to pay using Bitcoin. It holds inventory for more than 40,000 IT products in their Minnesota, US, warehouse covering HP, Dell, IBM, Cisco and Adtran IT products.

“Bitcoin will allow us to transact more seamlessly with customers both stateside in the US and overseas,” said Core4Solutions founder, Bronson Broer. “Transactions can be completed cheaper, and hopefully quicker than ever before, when compared to the old way of doing business via credit cards, bank wires and bank transfers.”

Bitcoin is currently valued at an all-time high, fuelled by a wave of new interest from China, interest from the US government authorities and continued media attention. It is much more than a replacement to fiat currency, because there are no transactional costs when using BTC. It could revolutionise the industry of merchant payment processing and international money transfers.

“We find the true value of Bitcoin to be the savings we’ll see in transaction fees, sometimes even as high as five percent,” said Broer. “By paying zero transaction fees, we plan to pass the savings on to our customers by offering discounts for customers that are purchasing with Bitcoin. We see this as a win-win.”

By Neil Ainger