Author: Julie Campbell

The school in British Columbia, Canada, is now letting students shop at campus bookstores with the digital currency.

A university in British Columbia, Canada, has now announced that it has started to accept the cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, within all of its bookstores, which allows students to be able to use their mobile wallets for a purpose that represents a first for post-secondary institutions within the country.

The announcement also stated that the university will accept Bitcoin payments at its vending machines.

Simon Fraser University (SFU) has said that Bitcoin mobile wallets based payments will be accepted at the Vancouver, Burnaby, and Surrey campuses. According to the SFU Bitcoin Club founder, Michael Yeung, “It is still a very new, techie kind of subject and it takes — I think, for the average person — a lot of time to be able to understand it and be comfortable using it.” That club was behind the spearheading of the use of this digital currency for mobile payments at the university.

The university has established a new system that allows for quick and convenient Bitcoin purchasing and spending.

Yeung explained that “The way we’ve integrated it at the bookstore, allowing you to quickly buy bitcoins under 10 seconds and spend it under 10 seconds, makes it a lot easier.” The virtual currency can be exchanged and transacted online without the assistance or regulation of any type of central bank. At the university, students are able to fill their wallet apps through the exchange of Canadian dollars at the enabled vending machines, or they can spend the Bitcoins they have already purchased.

At the university bookstores, Bitcoins will be accepted for the purchase of any products, including textbooks, as well as merchandise such as mugs and t-shirts. This is the first time that this type of transaction has been accepted at a university store in Canada, but it is not the first time that the school has used the currency.

This growing sector is proving it’s place within businesses and now schools. Many are predicting that Bitcoin will be accepted in every place of business within the next few years. There’s been a surge of special interest in Bitcoin training and learning more about how it works, mined and how it’s being used/invested.

Bitcoin donations through student mobile wallets were already used for a fundraising effort. That was the first time a post-secondary education institution accepted donations through that type of currency.

Publishers, marketplaces, app developers, and marketers, alike are still trying to master digital publications.

Despite the fact that the ebook is nothing new, it is continuing to generate tremendous shakeups within the ereader and tablet commerce industries, as industry giants in the selling and publishing worlds battle it out for the best selling advantage, and while tiny indie players dig their own niches to attempt to achieve their own successes.

Recently, Rakuten purchased the massive ebook firm, OverDrive, for a hefty $410 million investment into e-publications.

The Japanese retailer has now bought the massive American ebook company as a part of growing push that Rakuten is making into the “sharing economy” within the American mobile and tablet commerce market. OverDrive is a company and app that offers ebook rental services to schools and libraries in the United States and Canada. This is not the first step that Rakuten has taken into the North American ebook market. The head of the company’s global ebook business, Takahito Aiki pointed out that Canadian ebook giant, Kobo Inc. Was purchased in 2011 for $315 million”. That was a part of its “phase 1”, whereas the OverDrive purchase is said to be a part of its “phase 2”.

Not all tablet commerce deals in ebooks have been as peaceful, as Amazon and Penguin Random House are apparently disputing.

Even more recently, Penguin Random House and Amazon were said to be in dispute in their negotiations, once more. This is not a rare circumstance for Amazon when it comes to the issue of ebook pricing of titles of ebooks. Hundreds of bestselling authors that have accused Amazon of hurting writers and misleading customers. Moreover, a six month battle occurred between Amazon and the publishing company called Hachette, last year, as that brand saw a massive drop in its own ebook sales. While that specific battle ended last November, it’s clear that Amazon is facing a similar problem, yet again, only with a new publishing giant..

One group that appears to be performing quite strongly when it comes to the ebook market in sales over tablet and mobile commerce is among indie publishers. The Perspective book series, for example, has done exceptionally well for itself in offering its readers both ebooks and print copies. Indie publishers have greater freedom with ebook sales in terms of where they would like to sell and what price tag they would like to add. This can sometimes give them a pricing advantage over even large publishing companies, in a way that was not possible in the print market.