The five star hotel in Switzerland, The Dolder Grand, has announced that customers can now settle their accounts in bitcoin or ether. In a tweet, the Zurich based luxury hotel announced that it was the first facility of its kind to accept cryptocurrency payments.
The cryptographic payment function is being facilitated by the signature of Inacta fintech. The fintech has developed an application that allows guests to pay for hotel services from their bitcoin wallets. Bity, a Swiss exchange of cryptocurrencies, will convert cryptocurrencies into fiduciary currencies. In the future, Inacta will expand the amount of cryptocurrencies that customers can pay.
The Bitcoin Hodlers do not need to touch Fiat
According to Inacta blockchain chief consultant Roger Darlin, the application is aimed at hodlers. It is aimed at clients who have accumulated shares in legitimate cryptocurrencies and who do not want to convert them into traditional currencies, such as the Swiss francs. This also allows providers, who can be cautious about handling cryptocurrencies directly, to accept payments from these customers.
This coincides with the Fortune 500 signature, Avnet, which reveals that it is accepting cryptographic payments after partnering with the BitPay cryptographic payment signature.
The times they are a changing
Avnet, which has more than 15,000 employees in Asia, Europe and North America, cited the desire to keep up with the times as a reason to accept cryptography.
With approximately 250,000 Bitcoin transactions in the ledger that take place every day, they understand that the landscape is changing and they are positioning themselves and their clients to be ready for it.
This comes less than a month since Switzerland’s largest retailer, Digitec Galaxus, began accepting a series of cryptocurrencies that include bitcoin and ether. Other accepted cryptocurrencies were OmiseGo, NEO, TRON, Litecoin, Binance Coin, XRP, Bitcoin Satoshi Vision and Bitcoin Cash.
Digitec Galaxus was able to make this possible through a partnership with cryptographic payment provider Coinify. While the online retailer does not charge anything for cryptographic payments, Coinify will apply a 1.5 percent fee. However, this feature was only available for large purchases. For purchases of less than 200 Swiss francs, crypto will not be accepted.
It still does not convert, but considering
While the increasing adoption of cryptographic payments by big names is impressive, the future can only improve. Towards the end of last month, Japan’s largest train and subway operator, Japan Railways (JR) Group, announced that it was considering the payment option. However, JR Group does not plan to partner with a cryptographic payment provider. Rather, the utility plans to build its own payment infrastructure from scratch.
Another agency of the public sector that is considering adopting Bitcoin as a payment option is the State Administration of Kiev. While the authorities of the Ukrainian capital have previously considered the idea but abandoned it, this time it is likely to work because it has introduced electronic tickets.
Also published on Medium.