If you are in Australia or New Zealand you can buy drinks in Coca-Cola Amatil vending machines with BTC. Bitcoin payments are possible thanks to the company’s partnership with Centrapay.
Coca-Cola Amatil now accepts Bitcoin (BTC). Sources say that Coca-Cola Amatil and Centrapay have entered into a partnership to enable this. Centrapay, a leading digital asset company, helps users to use their assets in everyday life. Thirsty consumers will now be able to use their Sylo Smart Wallets to make purchases. This will be enabled through the use of QR codes.
This has been seen as a foray of the crypto space into retail.
Coca-Cola (K) Amatil is the largest bottler and distributor in Asia-Pacific. With over 2000 vending machines, users can now buy the 140-plus brands available. Transactions can now occur with a simple QR code scan.
Coca-Cola Amatil and Its Bitcoin Initiative
In what is a boom for the crypto space, this new innovative partnership is seen by many as needed urgently. The COVID-19 pandemic advances through the constant touching of public surfaces.
Pundits think that this could provide a use-case scenario for “contactless” commerce, at least for Coca-Cola Amatil’s 270 million-plus customers who will be able to pay for their drinks in Bitcoin.
While most of these customers don’t yet have access to this payment feature, it is expected that it will occur from one country to the next.
Centrapay CEO Jerome Faury has indicated that the difficult nature of integrating Web 3 technologies and terrible end-user experiences are responsible for their low adoption rates. He said:
“We have solved both these issues. Centrapay is pioneering the way to enable this new internet of value and bring its benefits to both consumers and merchants. And it comes with the added benefit of reducing physical contact and addressing the hygiene concerns we’ve all become acutely aware of due to COVID-19″.
Jerome also said that Centrapay aims to expand into other regions. This is after proof-of-concept that its technology works.
This comes as New Zealand has reviewed its movement restrictions to level one. The southeast Asian country hasn’t recorded new COVID-19 cases in at least two weeks.
Innovation Is the New Normal
Innovations like this could become the new normal even at zero recorded coronavirus cases. They help to reduce the risk of contracting new infections that don’t have vaccines. The adoption of cryptocurrencies continues to sweep across the world. Payment services that integrate digital assets into the rest of the economy are critical.
The world continues to teeter from the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the ways that this could change will be the broad adoption of cryptocurrencies. The only way that broad adoption occurs is through the use of digital assets in real use-cases.
Retail has so far been the biggest loser in the global economy. Digital asset usage in this sector will also help create greater efficiency.
Many still consider the digital space to be new. This is a coming of age of the crypto space as it changes the world one sip at a time (pun intended).