Category: Payments

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Australia Crypto News Payments

1st Energy Becomes First Australian Energy Retailer to Go Crypto

In a first for the Australian market, energy retailer 1st Energy will begin allowing cryptocurrency as a form of payment following a new partnership with crypto payment platform BitPay. 

From March 4, 1st Energy customers will be able to pay their power bills using a range of popular cryptocurrencies including BTC, BCH, ETH, DOGE, SHIB and XRP.

Crypto payments will be made via BitPay, which is currently the largest crypto payment provider globally and has been used by several large companies including AT&T, Microsoft and WeWork.

How Does It Work?

Payments can be made using the BitPay wallet app, crypto debit card (which will launch in Australia soon), or Chrome browser extension.

Customers who choose to pay their 1st Energy bills using BitPay, firstly need to select which crypto to make payment in: currently there’s support for 13 cryptocurrencies and five stablecoins. 

1st Energy customers are then presented with a QR code, which can be scanned using the BitPay wallet app. They can then see the exact amount of crypto needed to pay their bill. The bill amount will be locked for 15 minutes so that fluctuations in the value of the crypto don’t change the figure a person owes.

Crypto Payments a Competitive Advantage

The adoption of crypto as a payment method is a reflection of the increasing mainstream adoption of the technology. 

1st Energy believes providing crypto payment options offers a competitive advantage over its larger and slower-moving competitors:

As a smaller retailer, we are all about choice, and part of that is giving customers the option to pay the way they want. 

Felix Baillie, 1st Energy representative

Is Paying With Crypto Worth It Right Now?

Of course there are also downsides to paying with crypto – everyone knows about the guy who spent 10,000 BTC on a couple of pizzas. Bitcoin, in particular, recently has fallen out of favour as a means of payment, with many preferring to HODL – BitPay reports that BTC now accounts for only around 65 percent of payments on its platform, down from 92 percent in 2020.

The desire to HODL in addition to the murky regulatory environment in Australia may reduce the number of customers willing to pay using crypto, but seeing more companies add the option is undoubtedly a positive sign for crypto adoption in Australia.

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Crypto News E-commerce NFTs Payments

Ebay CEO: We May Accept Crypto Payment This Month

E-commerce giant eBay may start accepting cryptocurrencies soon, according to CEO Jamie Iannone, who says the company is considering adding cryptocurrencies as a medium of exchange and “other forms of payments” as soon as next week.

This comes a few months after eBay changed its policies allowing the trading of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), though it has yet to make an official announcement.

So even without announcing anything or doing anything, people started trading NFTs on a platform. It reminded me of many years ago when people just started selling cars when we didn’t even have a vehicle business at that point. So we’re seeing the same type of thing [with NFTs].

Jamie Iannone, CEO, eBay

eBay Targeting Younger Audiences

Iannone revealed that eBay is focusing on the younger generation who are actively selling sneakers on the platform. As cryptocurrencies and NFTs appeal to Gen Z, the multinational is considering expanding its list of available form of payments.

We’re appealing to the younger generation, where they’re coming in selling their sneakers, becoming collectors on the platform, and they’re building new marketing capabilities.

Jamie Iannone, CEO, eBay

There’s actually already a way to buy on eBay using crypto through a service called Bitrefill, where you can use your Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and more to buy eBay gift cards, and then use them to purchase products from eBay directly.

NFTs and Crypto Now Part of Everyday Life

The rise of NFTs and decentralised finance (DeFi) is now seen everywhere, from retail traders and crypto-savvy people to real estate companies and fashion brands entering the metaverse and creating their own NFT collections.

This week, Crypto News Australia reported that Decentraland will host the first Crypto Fashion Week, gathering the elite of the fashion industry including Paco Rabanne, Dolce & Gabbana, Tommy Hilfiger and many more.

German manufacturer Puma also entered the metaverse last month in the wake of its sports apparel rivals Nike and Adidas, renaming itself Puma.eth on Twitter.

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Australia Blockchain CBDCs Crypto News Payments

Sovereign Aboriginal Yidindji Nation Launches Own CBDC

The Sovereign Yidindji Nation, an indigenous micronation located in the Australian rainforest region of far north Queensland, has created history in launching its own digital currency.

The micronation’s self-proclaimed financial technology minister, Murrumu of Walubara (see YouTube video, above), formed the Sovereign Yidindji Nation (SYN) in 2014 after renouncing his Australian citizenship. Now also the territory’s minister for foreign affairs and trade, renewable energy and communications and broadband, Murrumu this week announced the launch of a central bank digital currency (CBDC), making SYN the first indigenous nation on the Australian continent to become fully digitised.

Murrumu of Walubara. Source: sbs.com.au

Murrumu describes the so-called Sovereign Yidindji Dollar as a significant step in building the nation. “It was too expensive to mint coins and to print physical notes,” he explains. “It just didn’t make sense because it’s cheaper and better for the environment to go down the digital currency road.

We actually create the money in accord with our laws and that is then minted and verified on a digital platform, so we’re not just printing money out of thin air.

Murrumu of Walubara, Yidindji minister for financial technology, foreign affairs and trade, renewable energy and communications and broadband

Four Pillars of the Yidindji CBDC

The Yidindji CBDC has four distinctive features that differentiate it from others already established, such as the Sand Dollar in the Bahamas and Nigeria’s eNaira:

  • It is the first CBDC issued using the MetaMUI CBDC platform.
  • It has been issued exclusively in digital currency, without the need for paper bills.
  • It incorporates a payment system connected with MetaMUI’s service set identifier system, which can be used in all retail stores and government offices. Payments can be processed without using the dedicated network, there are no transaction fees, sales settlements are immediate, and cross-border payments can be made without using credit cards.
  • It is a convertible currency whose collateral assets are gold, silver, and other minerals and natural resources, such as green and blue carbon. Money issuance, backed by a digital certificate, is also backed with collateral assets.

MetaMUI combines the concept of a self-sovereign identity and a decentralised blockchain, thus safeguarding users’ privacy and avoiding centralised censorship and the abuse of private information.

Nation Already Using MetaMUI Identity System

The Sovereign Yidindji Government (SYG) has already built a national identity system using MetaMUI’s technology, meaning all Yidindji citizens, companies and organisations can create their own digital identities, own digital assets and make payments with the Yidindji Dollar.

The SYG has 17 ministers and 22 ministries, and plans to be the first government to become fully digitised. For the 40 SYN citizens with the digital identification app on their phones, using the new CBDC is simple. “Basically you can pay through a QR code,” Murrumu says.

The ultimate goal for Murrumu and the SYN is a treaty with the Australian Commonwealth. When that happens, Murrumu says, it will “enable our money to cross borders into the Australian system and vice versa”.

In September last year, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) joined Singapore, Malaysia and South Africa in launching a CBDC pilot for international settlements. At the time, the RBA announced it was looking to hire experts for its “CBDC research team” and expected the results of the pilot to be published “in early 2022”.

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Crypto News Institutions NFTs Payments

Mastercard Partners with Coinbase Enabling Easy NFT Purchases

Payments giant Mastercard has partnered with crypto exchange Coinbase to enable easier NFT (non-fungible token) purchases.

In a blog post, Mastercard said that buying NFTs should be as easy as buying goods on e-commerce sites, which is why it will soon allow customers to use their debit/credit cards on Coinbase’s upcoming NFT marketplace.

Buying NFTs on decentralised marketplaces such as OpenSea is a step-by-step process in which the user is required to set up a cryptocurrency wallet such as MetaMask, fund the wallet, and then connect it to the platform to start buying and trading NFTs. This is a normal process for most in the cryptosphere, but not as easy for newcomers to the space.

A Million on the Coinbase Waitlist

Coinbase’s NFT platform hasn’t gone live yet, but it has a waitlist with more than 1 million people signed up already. It will be one of the first marketplaces to allow card payments to buy NFTs. Other platforms such as Nifty Gateway and OpenSea have thought about adding this modality in the past, though the third-party requirements are still there.

Coinbase was basically an on-ramp for crypto for many, many users. Millions of people were able to access bitcoin for the first time by using Coinbase. So we want to do the same thing for NFTs with Mastercard by solving the pain points – to make it as easy as possible to buy an NFT and make sure it’s the best consumer experience.

Prakash Hariramani, senior director of product, Coinbase

On October 27 last year, Mastercard announced a partnership with crypto firm Bakkt to enable its 1000-plus banks and merchants in the US to buy and sell digital assets through Bakkt’s crypto custody services.

And to keep things safe, a month earlier Mastercard acquired blockchain forensic firm CipherTrace to enhance its operations in the crypto industry, enabling both companies to combine their technologies in the space.

Crypto Community Takes it with a Pinch of Humour

The news drew a mixed reaction from crypto Twitter, some claiming the NFT movement is nothing but a major Ponzi scheme, others saying teenagers and kids will use their mothers’ credit cards to buy NFTs just like they do with Fortnite skins.

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Bitcoin Crypto News Payments

Bitcoin Payments Decline as Other Cryptos Grow in Payment Usage

A literal interpretation of “cryptocurrency” necessarily implies a willingness on the part of the holder to exchange it for goods and services. However, according to BitPay, a company that provides BTC and BCH payment processing services for merchants, not all holders wish to part with their coins and, of late, Bitcoin spending is on the decline.

Spend of crypto by industry. Source: Bitpay

A Treasury and Marketing Strategy Wrapped in One

Around the globe, consumers and businesses are increasingly embracing crypto payments. While consumers may wish to spend some of their gains, many businesses have jumped on the bandwagon, driven by both financial and publicity reasons. It worked on both fronts for MicroStrategy:

That has increased the power of the brand by a factor of 100. We just had our best software quarter over the last 10 years. The Bitcoin business is driving shareholder returns. I think the employees are happy. The shareholders are happy.

Michael Saylor, chief executive and founder of MicroStrategy

From a company’s perspective, and when it comes to payments, there’s little downside to giving customers additional choices. Provided you aren’t hamstrung by shareholder environmental and social governance (ESG) activism (see Tesla), it makes commercial sense to accept some crypto assets – particularly since they can always be exchanged for fiat if the company doesn’t have a bullish outlook on the digital asset concerned.

From a customer’s perspective, the main downside to using one’s crypto for payment is that in most countries (including Australia), it constitutes a taxable event, meaning you will be obliged to pay capital gains tax.

Bitcoin’s Digital Gold Narrative Reducing Payments?

Given its inbuilt scarcity and trusted monetary policy, Bitcoin was always likely to be the long-term investor’s digital asset of choice. If billionaires like Bill Miller and Peter Thiel recommend HODLing Bitcoin, then it’s probably advice worth thinking about.

As the digital gold narrative became firmly entrenched in mainstream consciousness, together with growing institutional adoption, it’s no surprise that the level of Bitcoin spent is on the decline.

Last year, Bitcoin’s use at merchants that use BitPay dropped to about 65 percent of processed payments, down from 92 percent in 2020.

Crypto spending patterns compared. Source: BitPay
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Bitcoin Crypto News Payments

Tonga Intends Following El Salvador Playbook, Making BTC Legal Tender by November

According to former member of parliament Lord Fusitu’a, the small Polynesian island nation of Tonga is likely to emulate El Salvador’s adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender, perhaps as soon as November this year.

No Stranger to Bitcoin

As reported by Crypto News Australia last October, Lord Fusitu’a is a well-known Bitcoin advocate who previously expressed a desire for the country to adopt it as legal tender.

Bitcoin is the first truly global natively open monetary system. Blockchain is the most optimal storage medium for money if your goal is decentralisation and complete, egalitarian democratisation of money.

Lord Fusitu’a

One of the primary motivations for adopting Bitcoin is that Tonga remains highly dependent on remittances, even more so than El Salvador, which as a result of adopting Bitcoin may cost Western Union as much as US$400 million per annum.

Between 38 percent and 41.1 percent of our GDP, depending on which World Bank figures you use, is remittances. To get those remittances to Tonga, Western Union takes a 30 percent bite out of them, on average.

Lord Fusitu’a

As a member of the Tongan royal family, Lord Fusitu’a enjoys significant influence within the small island nation and took to Twitter to outline his vision for adopting Bitcoin.

The playbook, which entailed tabling a bill before parliament, was, according to him, “almost identical to the El Salvador bill”:

November Seen as Realistic Date of Adoption

Shortly after his series of tweets, Twitter was abuzz with speculation as to when Bitcoin could be legal tender in Tonga, to which Lord Fusitu’a enthusiastically replied.

If successful, the move could onboard more than 100,000 Tongans onto the Bitcoin network. For many, this comes as no surprise. In 2021, Tonga was one of the shortlisted countries to adopt Bitcoin next, following an appearance on the What Bitcoin Did podcast last year.

Lord Fusitu’a. Source: RNZ

Lord Fusitu’a has been singing the praises of Bitcoin for some time, asserting that it can make the nation “competitive and wealthy” if embraced. Aside from the focus on remittances, the other benefit to Tongans is an inflation-proof vehicle for long-term savings.

Nation state adoption of Bitcoin has commenced and the game theory is under way.

BTC nation state adoption game theory. @DylanLeClair

Tellingly, it’s not just Bitcoiners who are forecasting other nation states joining the Bitcoin network. Fidelity Asset Management, a US$4.2 trillion fund manager, has similar thoughts:

Fidelity Asset Management report. Source: Alex Gladstein
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Bitcoin Crypto News Cryptocurrencies Payments Surveys

Survey: 24% of Small Businesses Plan to Accept Crypto This Year

According to a survey conducted by Visa, almost a quarter of small businesses across nine countries around the world plan to accept cryptocurrencies as a form of payment in 2022, as crypto holders increasingly want to use their assets to shop.

One in Four SMBs Plans to Accept Crypto as Payment

Almost one in four small and mid-size businesses (SMBs) that participated in the sixth edition of Visa’s global Back to Business study indicated its intention to accept payments in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. The survey consisted of 2,250 small businesses owners in countries including the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, Canada, Brazil, Singapore and the US.

In the same survey, 73 percent of respondents indicated that accepting new forms of digital payment options will be a key factor affecting business growth in 2022. Of all respondents in the study, 82 percent said they planned to implement a form of digital payment option this year.

Visa found that more than 30 percent of SMBs in the UAE, Hong Kong, Singapore and Brazil planned to offer cryptos as a payment option in the coming months. By contrast, 19 percent of SMBs in the US and a mere eight percent in Canada expected to do so.

The survey also included a consumer section where 1,500 adults across nine markets participated. More than half of respondents in this section expected to go completely cashless within the next 10 years, while 41 percent indicated that customers had abandoned a physical purchase where digital payment options were not available.

Accepting Crypto Not for Everyone

Although accepting crypto payments has become more widespread and not limited to SMBs, not all businesses are convinced that the option is for them. In an exciting reveal last week, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky confirmed that the home-stay site is working to accept crypto in 2022, in response to huge demand from its customer base.

Last week, Mozilla Foundation, the non-profit organisation behind open-source web browser Firefox, announced it would be accepting crypto donations to “keep the Web open and free”. Only days later the foundation reversed its decision, citing concerns regarding “cryptocurrency’s environmental impact”.

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Banking CBDCs Crypto News Payments

Visa Partners with ConsenSys to Pilot CBDC

American multinational payments giant Visa has partnered with ConsenSys, a blockchain software tech company, to build the proper infrastructure to pilot its own CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency).

As per an announcement on January 13, Visa will integrate its payment module into ConsenSys blockchain infrastructure to issue a CBDC pilot to test retail applications such as cards and wallets, with an anticipated launch by the end of the first quarter of 2022. Visa clients will be able to integrate the infrastructure to issue CBDC-linked payment cards and wallet credentials.

Visa revealed it will be working with approximately 30 banks worldwide to receive insights over what they want to achieve with CBDCs, a topic long discussed among these financial institutions.

Decentralised Entities Working With … Banks?

Visa has been already working with CBDC products since last year. For instance, in October 2006 it announced it was working on developing a protocol to send digital currencies between blockchains to operate as a “universal payment channel”, which will connect CBDC networks between countries.

On the other hand, ConsenSys is an Ethereum-based protocol that allows developers to build next-generation blockchain infrastructure for businesses, with a special Ethereum suite to access the decentralised web. But the crypto community’s reaction to ConsenSys working with central banks has sparked outrage:

“CBDCs are a form of digital dollar, or that’s what we’ve been told by most media channels. CBDCs are actually far away from the original concept of decentralised money as it would be in the hands of centralised financial entities, turning it into a potential surveillance tool“, as cautioned this week by US lawmaker Tom Emmer:

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Institutions Payments Stablecoins

PayPal Confirms it is ‘Exploring a Stablecoin’ After Dev Discovers it in Code

PayPal Coin is the new soon-to-be-released stablecoin from Paypal Holdings Inc, as revealed to Bloomberg News by Jose Fernandez da Ponte, PayPal’s senior vice-president of crypto and digital currencies.

Stablecoin Development Code Found Inside the PayPal App

In an interview with Bloomberg, Fernandez da Ponte said: “We are exploring a stablecoin; if and when we seek to move forward, we will, of course, work closely with relevant regulators.”

As per the report, it was PayPal developer Steve Moser who found the hidden code of a stablecoin already in development inside the PayPal app. Moser also found a logo image that read: “PayPal Coin”.

Discovered logo of PayPal’s stablecoin. Source: Bloomberg

However, the code and the image were the products of a recent PayPal internal hackathon – a type of internal gathering frequent in tech companies where employees such as software developers engage and collaborate to promote new products and projects. This means that the final product could change.

Stablecoins Facilitating Payment Systems

PayPal’s effort to engage with the crypto market was one of the main drivers behind the Bitcoin price rally that started in mid-2020 – a year that saw the emergence of the institutional interest in cryptocurrencies.

While most financial institutions were hoarding high market-cap currencies such as bitcoin and ethereum in 2021, the interest in stablecoins quickly took over as they facilitate USD transactions for businesses. On December 13 it became apparent that Novi, Meta’s digital wallet, was on the move to start a stablecoin payments trial by simply sending a text message on the WhatsApp chat app, instantly and with no fees.

However, the stablecoin market has its downside – there is no deposit insurance for holders, for one. But as Crypto News Australia reported last October, the US Government has been studying the possibility of a US$250,000 coverage for holders of these tokens.

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Crypto News E-commerce Payments

Airbnb CEO Confirms Site is Working to Accept Crypto in 2022

After asking his Twitter followers to share their ideas for a new service it can offer in 2022, Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky was met with 4,000 suggestions – of which integrating cryptocurrency payments ranked as number one.

After crypto integration, other top suggestions included clear pricing displays and guest loyalty programs:

According to Chesky’s tweet, the peer-to-peer lodging service is “already working on some” of the proposed ideas, and “will look into others”. Elaborating on the possibility of integrating crypto support into the platform, he said that this suggestion included “a variety of token ideas”, which would most likely not be confined to one or two digital assets.

As it stands, Airbnb accepts Visa, MasterCard, Apple Pay, Google Pay and PayPal as payment methods, and since 2013 the company has processed US$336 billion in transactions.  

Crypto ‘Revolution’ All About ‘Trust’

This is not the first time Chesky has opened up regarding the company’s potential acceptance of cryptos. Two months ago, he stated that Airbnb was “looking into it”.

He added:

Like the revolution in travel, there is clearly a revolution happening in crypto; Airbnb and crypto both have interesting relationships with trust.

Brian Chesky, co-founder and CEO, Airbnb

More and More Industries Accept Crypto Payments

The news from Airbnb comes after many e-commerce companies have expressed their openness to crypto integration. Last year, eBay said it was considering accepting crypto as a payment option. In December, Croatia’s top food retailer introduced crypto payments. After partnering with local fintech Electrocoin, Konzum modified its PayCek system to introduce crypto payments.

There is a wealth of evidence to suggest it won’t be the last.