For all you bitcoin lovers who’ve always wanted to get your hands on frequent flyer mileage, now just might be your chance.
Through a special partnership between bitcoin payment processor Bitnet and payment network Universal Air Travel Plan (UATP), over 250 airlines are now allowing customers and flight fanatics alike to pay for the travel tickets in bitcoin. This is probably the biggest thing for “irl” bitcoin users since Expedia began accepting the digital currency.
UATP CEO and president Ralph Kaiser was particularly enthusiastic when speaking of the partnership, explaining:
“We are very happy to be partnering with Bitnet to add bitcoin to our payment platform. We are always looking for skilled partners to bring additional forms of payment to the UATP processing platform and Bitnet fits the bill well.”
Some of the big-name airlines now accepting bitcoin include British Airways, United Airlines, American Airlines and Delta Airlines. Furthermore, bitcoin acceptance is not just limited to air travel. The partnership allows travelers to pay for things such as hotels, car rentals and even Amtrak tickets with the digital currency.
Vice President of Solutions Strategy at Bitnet Akif Khan believes that the partnership not only makes perfect sense, but opens up a wide range of doors for each company:
“Bitnet and UATP share the same mission of lowering transaction costs and fraud risk for their clients… Partnering with UATP was an obvious choice for Bitnet. Our partnership will make it easier for AUTP’s member airlines to accept payments in bitcoin via a lightweight integration that avoids impact to downstream systems and leverages existing UATP reporting and refund interfaces.”
News has been big for Bitnet these last several months, as October of last year saw the company raising over $14 million dollars in a Series-A funding round that brought them into direct competition with companies like BitPay.