New York preschool starts accepting Bitcoin

In another move showing that Bitcoin is becoming part of day-to-day life for an increasing number of people, a New York area kindergarten has announced plans to start accepting Bitcoin as payment. While this may sound like any number of 'business starts accepting Bitcoin' stories that you've read over the past couple of years, in reality this one is a little different and shows that knowledge of and use of Bitcoin is definitely starting to spread outside the fintech industry. Response to public demand The scoop about the kindergarten accepting Bitcoin originally came from an interview that Marco Ciocca, chair of The Montessori Schools in Flatiron and SoHo, gave to Business Insider magazine. As well as explaining how the system will work in practice, he mentioned that the new policy was actually a response from a number of parents who had been asking for Bitcoin acceptance. The fact that the move was a response to genuine customer demand, rather than a simple attempt to grab a few headlines, shows that the story of Bitcoin is starting to move on and its daily use is becoming mainstream among a certain part of society. A better alternative to credit cards While it was quick to respond to parent demands for Bitcoin acceptance, the Montessori Schools have been steadfast in their non-acceptance of credit cards. Ciocca gave a simple reason for this; the fees charged by the major credit card companies to businesses that use their services destroy margin and make it impossible for businesses in certain sectors to accept them. Bitcoin's decentralised model means that it does not suffer from these types of problems and that the pre-school can accept them without introducing massive overheads that drain cash from the business. More companies will need to make this sort of move for cryptocurrencies to become truly mainstream but the attitude of Ciocca and the parents at the kindergarten shows that we may be closer to this point than we thought.