Paying for home décor and clothing at Overstock.com is about to get a lot more interesting as the online retailer announced today that shoppers can now purchase products with numerous cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, Dash, Monero even the newly minted Bitcoin Cash and others.

Overstock.com Inc. is offering the capability through an integration with digital currency exchange ShapeShift AG. ShapeShift provides the capability to easily convert digital currencies between different types in seconds, without the need to sign in or provide account information. Overstock will rely on this capability to allow customers to deposit whatever digital currency they desire – be it Bitcoin, Ethereum or another asset – and then transfer that currency the same way they would with any other payment transaction.

Overstock founder and Chief Executive Officer Patrick M. Byrne called the company pro-freedom in a statement. “For that reason, we have been an early proponent and adopter of cryptocurrencies,” he said.

In 2014, Overstock started accepting Bitcoin as payment for products on its website and since then has kept a prominent place in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. The company also later invested $5 million in Bitcoin tech startup PeerNova and launched a $25 million bond on the company’s T0.com platform that utilizes Bitcoin technology to secure and distribute the funds.

“ShapeShift has provided an elegant way for users of any digital currency to transact seamlessly and privately across chains,” Byrne said.

This ease of transaction provided by ShapeShift forms the foundation for Overstock accepting the numerous nonmainstream cryptocurrencies that have been popularized recently. There are a myriad of merchant processors for Bitcoin, such as Coinbase Inc. and Bitpay Inc., but it is far more difficult to accept and process less popular coins without going through an established cryptocurrency exchange with all the accompanying entanglements that entails.

The integration, ShapeShift Chief Executive Officer Erik Voorhees said, will help the next generation of Overstock customers and allow for a greater audience to exchange digital assets for products.

The vision of the partnership between ShapeShift and Overstock is to break down barriers for users of digital assets generally. Customers with digital wallets on their phones or computers could simply sit down and buy something without the need to exchange it first themselves.

According to the website Coinmarketcap.com, the number of non-Bitcoin digital currencies has risen to more than a thousand. Although Bitcoin still has the largest market capitalization, now it represents just 50 percent of the market, down from 80 percent a year ago.

Overstock also claimed the announcement makes it the first major retailer to accept multiple cryptocurrencies as payment.

Image: Overstock.com