Travel management firm Corporate Traveller, the largest in the UK, has started accepting Bitcoin (BTC) as a mode of payment. To make that feasible, the company has entered into a partnership with BitPay, a crypto payment processing firm. BitPay will permit Corporate Traveller, which offer business travel related services to SME (small and medium enterprises), to accept Bitcoin.
Andy Hegley, UK General Manager at Corporate Traveller, said:
“We identified an increasing demand from our clients for the option to pay in bitcoin for business travel bookings made by our travel consultants. We chose BitPay to manage our merchant processing because they make it easy and handle the entire process of getting the Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash from the customer and depositing cash into our account.”
Corporate Traveller is not bothered about constant price changes in cryptocurrency markets as the Bitcoins will be directly exchanged for British pounds. For this service BitPay charges a fee of 1%, which is cheaper than credit card processing, according to Corporate Traveller.
There are also several firms and entities in tourism and travel sector which have started accepting cryptos, citing consumer request. Back in March last year, the German National Tourist Board stated that it accepts Bitcoins and other cryptos as payment for the services offered.
In August 2018, the state government of Queensland, a province of Australia, approved TravelbyBit digital currency payments platform, which intends to promote tourism in Central Queensland via selling travel schemes that accept cryptocurrencies.
On its part, BitPay revealed that it has processed transactions worth $1 billion in 2018. The firm has made a new record in terms of transaction fee, with services extended to well-known corporates such as Dish Networks, HackerOne and even the State of Ohio.
BitPay also teamed with Wikimedia Foundation on January 30. The partnership enables the non-profit organization that owns and operates Wikipedia to increase the number of cryptos accepted by the way of donation.
