Brisbane Airport will soon allow travellers to pay with
cryptocurrency at retail outlets in its air terminals.
The airport’s owner quietly announced last week that it had
struck a deal with a Brisbane-based start-up called
TravelbyBit.
TravelbyBit - which received $88,070 from Advance Queensland’s
‘Ignite’ commercialisation assistance fund - provides a
way for merchants to accept payments in Bitcoin, Ethereum,
Litecoin, Dash and Steem.
“Although customers pay in digital currencies like Bitcoin, the
merchants can choose to receive payment in Bitcoin, fiat currency,
or a combination,” TravelbyBit said on its website.
Brisbane Airport Corporation said it was “working with
TravelbyBit to bring decentralised blockchain-enabled payments into
its terminal shopping".
It appears to have signed on at least 10 retailers to accept
crypto payments, including cafes and restaurants, souvenir shops
and newsagents.
The corporation’s general manager for strategic planning and
development, Roel Hellemons, said it was “just the beginning for us
as we hope to expand the digital currency option across the
business”.
“Many people around the world have made money investing in
cryptocurrencies and a lot of these people travel internationally,
so it makes sense to offer a digital currency experience within our
terminals,” Hellemons said.
“We’re also proud to be the first airport in the world to
achieve this in partnership with a small local start-up business
such as TravelbyBit, whose pioneering thinking is drawing attention
to Brisbane as a serious breeding ground of innovative
thinking.”
TravelbyBit already has around 26 merchants signed up to its
platform. Most are clustered in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley, though
some are in other towns.
The start-up appears to be developing “travel routes” that list places and experiences
along the way that can be paid for using crypto coins.
TravelbyBit CEO Caleb Yeoh said in a Medium post last September that the
company was looking “to sign up and induct merchants on Bitcoin
tourist routes from the city to the outback where a Bitcoin
traveller can find [themselves] in an old fashioned pub in a small
timeless town but pay with new age digital currency".
“We believe this will help boost the regional tourism industry
and help diversify local economies so that they are not just
reliant on the resources industry,” Yeoh said.
He outlined ambitions to take crypto payments into large tourism
sites in Queensland before expanding nationally.
“We can build new Bitcoin routes across the whole of Queensland
and then Australia,” he said.
The wild volatility of cryptocurrencies - which affects both
value and fees - has seen some large online firms pull back from
accepting them for purchases.
Last week, online payments processor Stripe withdrew its support for Bitcoin,
savaging it as being “better-suited to being an asset than being a
means of exchange".
That was seen as a clear reference to the boom in cryptocurrency
trading since December, as investors bought and sold coins in the
hope of large capital gains, rather than for use as currency
to buy goods.
Game marketplace Steam also pulled its support for Bitcoin in December
last year.
Bitcoin’s price has largely stabilised in the past week, testing
the US$10,000 mark on several occasions but so far facing
resistance to dip below it.
It was trading at US$11,828.80 at the time of publication,
according to Coinmarketcap.
By Ry Crozier (iTnews.com.au)