Expedia, one of the biggest online travel agencies that for four whole years offered users to pay for their services with bitcoin, has now stopped doing so.
It was recently reported that a representative of the company confirmed that bitcoin will no longer be accepted and other methods of payments are being considered. He also apologized for the fact that no prior notice was given and the option to pay with bitcoin was simply taken off the website. There was no official reason given as to why the company decided to do this.
The bitcoin payment method wasn’t as smooth as it could have been and customers frequently experienced problems, such as timed out payments and the necessity to pay a second time with a credit card even after the bitcoin payment was made. Some of the users speculate that this decision to stop accepting bitcoin could have been initiated after Coinbase, the platform through which these transactions were processed, implemented a new custodial policy, that no longer supported custodial solutions for merchants. Another online travel agency that used Coinbase, CheapAir has moved to another processing platform.