It’s exciting times for the Bitcoin payment industry these days, as we are seeing a vast amount of online companies, big and small, starting to accept the cryptocurrency as a mean of paying for their goods and services.
Poland’s state-owned air carrier LOT Airlines announced earlier this week that they will not start to accept Bitcoin payments for plane tickets. While not being the first, as Air Baltic started accepting Bitcoins in 2014, they are still one of the first and one of the biggest to do so.
Customers who wishes to purchase tickets using Bitcoins will be able to do so through the website and through the mobile application. The price will be shown in fiat-currency and then converted into Bitcoins at the rate currently available at the time of the purchase.
LOT Airlines have teamed up with BitPay to be able to accept Bitcoin payments and BitPay will be responsible for converting the fiat-currency price into Bitcoins and also pay LOT Airlines in a fiat-currency for all transactions made with Bitcoins.
“The new payment method is addressed to everybody who has a Bitcoin wallet, and is an active user of this currency when doing the shopping online. Bitcoins can be used to pay for any LOT flight on the majority of the markets where the airline sells tickets.” A statement from LOT Airlines said.
“It’s just a matter of time when payments with the online currency will become as popular as using credit cards today. We notice this potential, which is why we are one of the first airlines in the world to give its passengers the possibility of paying with Bitcoins as early as today.” The statement further read.
“We go for innovations thanks to which [the customers’] journey is even more comfortable and pleasant not only on board, but also much earlier – at the stage of buying the ticket. Many of them do the shopping online, including plane tickets.” Jiri Marek, Sales and Distribution Executive Director for LOT said in a press release.
Lawyer.com also announced this week that they have begun accepting Bitcoin payments for their services. The company basically offers people the chance to find a lawyer online and lawyers pays a monthly subscription fee to be on the website.
The site has been on the market for the past six years and sees the potential in accepting Bitcoin payments. The service costs between $99-$299 a month to be a member of, but lawyers paying with Bitcoins will be subject to a 10% discount.
“Bitcoin transactions reduce our costs, improve transaction speed and provide full billing transparency. In return, we can offer our services at significant savings. We’re not paying transaction fees, there are no bad credits, and we can manage our own bad debts.” Chief Executive Officer at Lawyer, Gerry Gorman said in a press release.
The site have been testing Bitcoin payments for a months time before deciding to integrate it into their payments platform. They have teamed up with Stripe to be able to accept Bitcoin payments and it works in the same way as explained with BitPay, where customers price will be converted to Bitcoins at the current rate.
“We have an emerging group of very tech-savvy lawyers. We think bitcoin could appeal to them in building their practices. Bitcoin is going to be mainstream five years from now. We’d like to be the leader today. We’ve known about and understood bitcoin, we wanted to achieve some sort of critical mass in the marketplace.” Gorman added.
