Sling TV, the cord-cutting service provider that allows its users to stream over 700 television channels via its app, announced on Friday they would accept Bitcoin payments through an integration with BitPay, a pioneer of global cryptocurrency payment services.
“Accepting crypto payments for this OTT digital platform was clearly the obvious next step for our subscribers,” the company said in the announcement post.
Sling TV LLC, otherwise known as Sling Media Inc, was purchased in 2007 by DISH, a company that made headlines back in 2014 for being the largest company at the time to accept Bitcoin payments.
At that time, Bernie Han, DISH executive VP and COO said, “We always want to deliver choice and convenience for our customers and that includes the method they use to pay their bills.” Speaking to Bitcoin in particular, Han added, “Bitcoin is becoming a preferred way for some people to transact and we want to accommodate those individuals.”
BitPay, which provides an optimized payment flow for over 90 different wallets, looks to bring the optionality and choice once spoken to by Sling’s parent company back in 2014. But at its current state, the integration is only available to existing Sling TV customers. New users joining the Sling platform will first need to provide legacy payment methods to establish their account and then have the option to continue with bitcoin and other cryptocurrency payments.
Customers will be able to prepay between one and six months of service using bitcoin. Before the prepaid period ends, the customers will need to either make another manual payment to extend their prepaid period, or use a legacy payment method to establish recurring purchases. If the prepaid period ends without another manual payment being made, Sling TV will default to the required legacy payment method that is required to be placed on every account.