Users of WordPress’s premium services can now pay using digital-only currency Bitcoin, the company said today.

WordPress users can currently pay with PayPal or a credit card, but each of those platforms comes with limitations. For example, PayPal blocks more than 60 countries according to WordPress.

“Some [countries] are blocked for political reasons, some because of higher fraud rates, and some for other financial reasons. Whatever the reason, we don’t think an individual blogger from Haiti, Ethiopia, or Kenya should have diminished access to the blogosphere because of payment issues they can’t control,” WordPress said in a blog post.

First introduced in 2009, Bitcoin is an open-source digital currency that uses sophisticated encryption. Bitcoin users have until now consisted largely of those inside the tech industry. WordPress could expose a much larger audience to the payment method.

Bitcoin

transactions can’t be reversed, minimizing the risk to vendors. Users can also choose to pay anonymously, a feature that could be helpful to bloggers in politically restrictive countries.

Reddit also said recently that it is “looking into” accepting Bitcoin payments for its Gold plans.

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