Consumers of Coca-Cola will be able to pay in crypto while using the vending machines operated by Coca-Cola distributor Amatil, which is also a well-known Asia Pacific soft drink bottler.
The initiative is based on a new agreement with Centrapay, a digital asset payment processing platform.
Over 2000 vending machines operating under Amatil network in New Zealand and Australia will facilitate consumers to pay using crypto by scanning a QR code with smart phone, as long as the crypto is held in a Sylo Smart Wallet.
Sylo Smart Wallet, a decentralized app offering messaging facility along with digital wallet, offers support for top digital currencies such as Bitcoin (BTC) and ERC-20 token.
Centrapay’s CEO Jerome Faury has highlighted that people are well aware of the need to maintain minimum physical contact in vendor locations due to global Covid-19 outbreak.
The company’s agreement with Coca-Cola Amatil, supposedly one of the biggest bottlers of Coca-Cola in the world and serving roughly 270 million consumers, is seen as a first move towards making crypto easily usable by consumers across the globe.
Faury said:
“Now we’ve shown how it can work in Australia and New Zealand, we’re looking to grow the business globally. We’ve established a presence in North America and will be targeting the U.S. market next.”
Centrapay concentrates on resolving limitations to the adoption of Web 3.0 technology, mainly digital identity facilities and virtual assets. The company has pointed out “integration complexity” and “poor user experiences” as the main stumbling block for adoption.
Notably, when Amatil and Centrapay are concentrating on vendors and consumers, other bottlers of Coke are already using blockchain powered platform for managing supply chain logistics.
Last November, Coke One North America, the software company that handles IT operations of Coca-Cola’s bottlers, started using a blockchain platform created by German software firm SAP for logistics management.
The company governs numerous franchises that manufacture, bottle and deliver almost 160,000 orders of Coke products on a daily basis.
