Every stop and wonder why credit card companies are able to get away with charging exorbitant fees on every transaction they process? Because they can.
But along walked in a digital currency that just might do away with the traditional way of conducting transactions. Yes, I’m talking about bitcoin, and Croatia’s largest yacht charter agency is now accepting it for their services.
Proudly displaying the bitcoin logo on their homepage, Yacht-Base is allowing their customers to now make payments for sailboats, motor boats, catamarans, luxury yachts, and more thanks to a connection with BitPay.
“We like bitcoin concept, decentralised currency, easy to use and fast, our clients don’t have to wait for days to confirm booking through bank [transfer],” a company representative told NEWSBTC. “90% of our clients pays for our services through bank transfer and bank fees are very high so we like the idea to cut bank fees for our clients.”
That’s just one of the benefits of using bitcoin. The other? To seek shelter from what some merchants would call the highway robbery that is credit card fees.
“Credit card companies charge us 3-5% for every booking that client make with credit cards,” the representative said.
And given this industry in particular, you can bet that the payment amounts are hefty — which means big money for the card processors.
Yacht-Base says all boat types can be rented using bitcoin (they even come with a full tank of fuel), and the bitcoin payments can even take the customer far beyond the boats themselves. The company, in service for twelve years, allows for the purchasing of additional services like a crew (skippers, chefs, hostesses), airport transportation, and accommodations at location of embarkment/disembarkment.
“We hope that more people will start using bitcoin and pay for our services with bitcoin to avoid overpriced bank and credit card charges and that can result in lower prices for our services,” the company says.