SERENDIPITY Worldwide Group will
be looking at piloting bitcoin as a
payment option for its customers in
the near future.
Dinesh Naidoo, group operations
director of SWG, says he started
investigating crypto currency
payment options when he was faced
with the costs of becoming PCI DSS
compliant.
Werner van Rooyen, spokesperson
for Luno, a bitcoin company
headquartered in Singapore with
operations in South Africa, says
the financial burden of PCI DSS
compliance on travel agents will be
lessened with bitcoin payments.
Werner says, when making a credit
card transaction travellers need to
submit a lot of personal, sensitive
information. “With bitcoin
transactions, you simply
provide the sender your
bitcoin wallet address (not
a long list of sensitive
information) and the
transaction, once confirmed,
is permanent.”
Expedia has been
accepting bitcoin for some
time now. Spokesperson for
Expedia, Victoria Cagliero
told TNW: “At Expedia we
are always looking ahead
to new and emerging
technologies, which is why
we were one of the earliest
adaptors of bitcoin.”
Dinesh points out that,
with bitcoin, there are
no credit card fees, no
merchant fees, and the risk
of fraud is considerably
reduced as customers
can’t dispute a bitcoin
transaction. “That’s a huge
advantage,” he says.
The downside is the
volatility of the crypto
currency. Says Werner: “If
you’re quoting a customer
in bitcoin – which you
calculated is a certain
amount of rands – the price
of bitcoin could change
between the time you quote
them and the time you
receive the payment, which
can result in admin and
bookkeeping discrepancies.”
However, Werner points
out that companies can
mitigate this risk using a
service provider like PayFast
(which relies on the Luno
API), which guarantees the
rate of exchange for 10
minutes. This means the
customer has ten minutes
to complete the payment
(it usually takes only a few
seconds). If they failed to
make the payment in that
time, the agent will need
to re-quote, using the new/
current rate of exchange.
Dwaine Van Vuuren,
director of Sharenet, a
company that lets people
keep track of prices of
crypto currency, says a
lot of middle class South
Africans hold bitcoin. “Many
have made huge gains over
the last two years, since
bitcoin is up over 300%. To
take some of these gains
and spend it on travel
today will require them
to liquidate some of their
bitcoin to acquire rands.”
He argues that an agency
accepting bitcoin would
be first choice for these
travellers.
