Coinbase announces three new merchant partners

In a new post on the company’s blog, Coinbase announced three new partners for their merchant platform: Xsolla, Terminal and Demand Food. While not as high-profile as DISH or 1-800-Flowers, all three companies have major presences in the respective market niches and suggest a rapidly growing trend of bitcoin merchant adoption in regional and mid-sized companies. Until this year, most bitcoin adoption was observed in smaller, owner-operated businesses.

Xsolla may not be a household name in the U.S., but the gaming payments company is well known in Russia and Ukraine. Although based in Los Angeles, the company is the Russian payment processor for many major gaming companies, such as Steam and Ubisoft. The company announced expansion plans last year, and appears to be moving into the European gaming payments market. The company is also a payment partner with gaming-oriented video streaming service Twitch.

Terminal is a cloud-based computing service, allowing customers to use low-powered hardware as an internet-connected terminal for high-powered processing. The service allows users to scale from a shared CPU to a 32 CPU virtual computer with 50GB of RAM in a matter of seconds. Given that Terminal’s main service is aimed at Silicon Valley startups, where bitcoin is already a major topic, the partnership seems like a natural fit.

A more surprising connection is Demand Food, an Austin-based on-demand food delivery service. The company’s relatively small size and limited delivery area suggest that its bitcoin adoption is mostly symbolic. That said, Austin is one of the most tech-forward cities in the U.S., and already has a relatively high level of bitcoin adoption. More than 70 bitcoin-accepting businesses are listed in the city on CoinMap.