"The sheer volume of new merchants has started to explode over the last month as more businesses begin to see the value in accepting bitcoin payments," says Anthony Gallippi, co-founder and CEO of BitPay. "By accepting bitcoin, a business can receive a payment from any country, instantly, with no risk of fraud. No other payment technology can offer this level of functionality."

The majority of BitPay's merchants are in the United States, followed by the U.K., Canada, Australia, and Finland. Businesses in a total of 98 countries use BitPay to process bitcoin payments. Most of the bitcoin-accepting merchants are eCommerce businesses, offering services ideal for virtual currency payments such as web hosting, domain registration, VPN services, and digital downloads.

As a result of the secretary of the Central Bank of Finland publicizing that bitcoin is legal to use in Finland, many businesses have seized the opportunity to accept bitcoin. Some of the rather unique merchants in Finland include a dentist office, a veggieburger restaurant chain, and a funeral service.

In just three weeks after launching the new BitPay.com website, the number of approved merchants using BitPay has jumped by 30%. BitPay enables merchants to accept bitcoins as a form of payment, just as easily they accept other methods of payment. Merchants have zero volatility risk of holding bitcoins if they choose a bank direct deposit.

The 1,000th merchant is the Bitcoin Store, which sells over 500,000 consumer electronics items.

"Because we accept bitcoin, we reduce our costs and risks of accepting internet payments, so our site is able to offer the same products for about 1-2% cheaper than our competition," says Roger Ver, CEO of the Bitcoin Store.

Bitcoin is a new financial technology, invented in 2009 as the first peer-to-peer digital currency. Using bitcoin, it is possible to send money like an email - to anyone, anytime, anywhere - without going through any bank or government or corporation.

Bitcoin is ideal for internet payments, because it solves the risk of card-not-present credit card fraud. Credit card fraud costs businesses $100 Billion per year according to a Lexis Nexus study, and 95% occurs in situations where the card is not present. Bitcoin eliminates the risk of fraud in collecting internet payments. BitPay makes it easy for businesses to accept bitcoin.