Use bitcoins to pay for Microsoft content for your Lumia

You can now exchange digital bitcoins to pay for Windows Phone apps, games and more for your Lumia smartphone.

Dollars, euros, rupees … and now bitcoins: Microsoft recently accepted the peer-to-peer decentralized network of digital currency as a way for folks in the U.S. to pay for content from the Windows Phone and Windows stores as well as Xbox content such as games and music.

For those of you not very familiar with bitcoin, it’s sometimes called “cash for the Internet” and its advantages include the ability to send and receive money instantly no matter where you are in the world; low transaction fees; and added security and control.

Trade in bitcoins at current market value via Bitpay–the world’s leading bitcoin payment processor–into your Microsoft account. You can exchange up to the equivalent of $1,000 a day in bitcoins into your account. After that, you can redeem them to pay for the latest apps, games, music and movies.

Photo credit: Microsoft Fire Hose Blog

Why bitcoins? Because this virtual currency gives people more choice, said Eric Lockard, corporate vice president of Universal Store at Microsoft, in a post on the Microsoft Fire Hose blog.

“This is about giving people options and helping them do more on their devices and in the cloud,” he said.

“The use of digital currencies such as bitcoin, while not yet mainstream, is growing beyond the early enthusiasts. We expect this growth to continue and allowing people to use bitcoin to purchase our products and services now allows us to be at the front edge of that trend.”

If you’d like more information about using bitcoins to buy Microsoft content, go to this Fire Hose blog post. For a step-by-step tutorial, go here.

Have you ever used bitcoin or thought about doing so? We’re interested to hear your thoughts!