(Newswire.net — July 23, 2021) — Traveling means experiencing positive emotions, opening new horizons, new cultures, new ways of thinking, and, who knows, but probably discovering something unexploited inside you. During a journey, people find new hobbies and interests that can appear the reason for their being in the future.
Going back to history, hard not to mention to which extent has the way of getting around changed. Namely, the way we get to other places, the transport we choose, as well as how we make payments. Nowadays, the world is switching more and more to online payments instead of cash. Especially virtual currencies that you can buy at CEX.IO come into play.
Recently, digital currencies have become a perfect method to make purchases. Here is the point we want to dwell on in this article: how to pay while traveling with crypto?
Booking tickets sites
Taking into account that traveling by plane remains the prevalent way for traveling, some companies decided to accept Bitcoins. There are multiple booking sites that have been receiving payments in BTC since cryptocurrencies got popular. Let’s take a look at some of them.
Cheapair
The platform was established in 1989. Bitcoins have been accepted by CheapAir since 2013. As a matter of fact, they were the first to offer such a service. Since 2014, the service has also accepted Bitcoin for hotel reservations.
SufrAir
The company Surf Air is a forerunner in the monthly subscription plan allowing unlimited flights across California and Las Vegas (12 overall destinations). As well, they offer flights between London and Zurich (via their website, Surf Air intends to launch 8 more routes for Europe in 2018). A subscription to Surf Air now is possible for payments made in Bitcoin and Ethereum.
airBaltic
The platform was the first to accept Bitcoin payments via the site for more than 60 destinations all over the CIS, Europe, Middle East, and Russia. In the website’s price list, tickets cost is shown in euros. During the payment process for airBaltic flights, customers’ Bitcoins are converted to euros based on the current exchange rate. A third-party payment processor, BitPay, helps airBaltic convert Bitcoins to euros so that travelers can use them. In airBaltic’s Basic class, the cheapest tickets are available for payments with Bitcoin.
Road trips
If you opt for traveling by foot in the USA, Coinfuel is a great company offering you special gift cards if you want to pay with digital currency. How can you use them? The gift cards give you the possibility to fill your car with gas at such well-known gas stations, like Shell, 76, etc.
Hotel reservations
Expedia.com
The service decided to accept crypto in 2014. Considering that the Bitcoin exchange rate fluctuates quickly, Expedia.com got the price fixed for 10 minutes while booking. Later on, the platform cooperated with Coinbase to make payments easier.
Commerces accepting payments in virtual currency
No matter which type of traveling you choose, you cannot but visit various shops and cafes. Which of them are ready to accept payments in virtual currency?
Starbucks
Probably, one of the most popular chains of cafes in the USA and Europe. There was initial disappointment in the Bitcoin community when a premature report claimed Starbucks would start accepting Bitcoin payments directly in stores in 2019. In the meantime, Starbucks clarified a couple of the mistakes made in the reports. First, they won’t accept Bitcoin as a payment method directly. Rather, the company would join forces with Bakkt, an upcoming futures exchange, and accept Bitcoin payments only in the mid-2020 timeframe when Bakkt launches.
Hopefully, the app was launched, and now you can pay with crypto for any drinks and snacks you want to eat in Starbucks. It’s not directly accepted by Starbucks, but users can convert cryptocurrency using the Bakkt App to “supported loyalty”, “rewards points”, and frequent flyer miles — convert them to dollars and load that value onto the Starbucks card.
Whole Foods
Spedn, the Winklevoss Flexa spending app, is partnered with Whole Foods. Via the Spedn app, you have the option of buying everything you need with Bitcoin, Litecoin, or Gemini dollars. However, Spedn isn’t just for whole foods. Regal Cinemas, Baskin Robbins, and Jamba Juice are just a few of the merchants accepting Bitcoin currently.
Burger King
Since 2019, the huge chain of fast food has adopted Bitcoin, Dash, Litecoin, Binance Coin, Ethereum, and Tether as a payment method.
In cooperation with CryptoBuyer, a crypto gateway based in Panama, the company began accepting these coins in forty locations. Dashed Core Group also leads the partnership.
It’s not the first time Burger King has taken a keen interest in crypto. On its website, Burger King Germany now accepts Bitcoin payments, and some locations in the Netherlands have been accepting it since 2016. As well, A custom cryptocurrency for Burger King Russia was released by Waves in 2017 called “Whoppercoin”.
Pizza Hut
Pizza Hut, a giant pizza franchise, is available in Venezuela for Bitcoin from November 2020. Earlier, economic sanctions imposed on the country led to a surge in cryptocurrency acceptance.
Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies are not directly collected from Pizza Hut customers. CryptoBuyer is used to process payments. For Pizza Hut, Cryptobuyer handles all cryptocurrency payments.
With Crypto Buyer, you can buy goods in more than 20,000 different online stores. On this list, there is Bitcoin as well as Dash (DASH), Dai (DAI), Litecoin (LTC), Binance Coin (BNB), Binance Dollar (BUSD), Tether (USDT), Ethereum (ETH).
To sum up
All in all, we have analyzed how our journeys have changed since the virtual currency appeared.
What is more, in our article, we have listed the most popular services that may come in handy while traveling.
We have also described how some stores and cafes adopt crypto payments and have enumerated crypto they accept.
It’s appeared that there are quite many companies ready to take virtual money for the work they do. Among them are booking platforms, shops, and restaurants.