In a pair of statements that went out simultaneously Tuesday, Time, Inc. and Coinbase announced a partnership that will allow the magazine publication company to accept bitcoin payments.
“We believe this is an important step in helping the publishing industry understand and explore new business models that can be enabled with bitcoin,” Coinbase wrote on its blog.
Time, Inc. publishes more than 90 magazines, a portfolio that includes Time, Travel + Leisure, Sports Illustrated and People.
Customers will be able to pay subscription fees to the following Time, Inc., publications in bitcoin as of Tuesday:
- Fortune
- Health
- This Old House
- Travel + Leisure (print subscriptions only)
According to Time, Inc., the media company reaches 130 million consumers each month through its publications.
Coinbase representatives say they believe this partnership represents a big step toward getting the publishing industry to embrace money that is native to a globally connected Internet.
“Micropayments, for example, provide an incredible opportunity for content creators and media companies, allowing consumers to make small payments for content in an open network for the first time,” the Coinbase blog post reads. “We look forward to partnering with Time Inc. to explore this and other new applications of Bitcoin in the future.”
The move for Coinbase comes on the heels of its introduction of a tipping button that is designed to reward content creators and publishers through micropayments.
At the end of November, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong identified micropayments as a big area of focus for the Bitcoin community in 2015.
“There are also people doing things with micro transactions like tipping or monetizing the upvote on Reddit, all the kinds of things that will drive interesting use cases,” he said. “We think in 2015 those are going to be the areas to watch.”
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