Expedia, a giant travel industry and a pioneer in accepting Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as a means of payment to acquire airline tickets and hotel services, recently decided to stop accepting cryptocurrencies, forcing users to seek other alternatives to cancel their national and international trips.
According to a report by Marketexclusive.com, a spokesperson for the well-known website Expedia confirmed that for the time being the company would not receive more Bitcoins as a method of payment for flight reservations or lodging, and that it would be exploring other alternative payment methods in order to future. In addition, the spokesperson apologized on behalf of the company because the decision was made without prior notice to the community.
In addition, the spokesperson's report indicated that the company would have been experiencing problems with payments in Bitcoin for several months, including complaints from its customers due to the lengthy and tedious process of validating payments, many problems to make refunds and Many customers find out that they should also cancel some credit card fees even after making payments in Bitcoin.
According to several speculations on the part of members of the crypto community establish that Expedia would no longer accept payments in Bitcoin due to Bitcoin's payment processor, Coinbase; I would have introduced a new marketing tool that would modify the service.
In March of this year, Reddit announced that it would no longer accept Bitcoin payments for its Reddit Gold premium membership service, mainly blaming Coinbase's modifications to its platform. Also, an administrator of Reddit was quoted commenting that due to these changes in addition to some problems with payments in Bitcoin, no further payments would be accepted in this way in the future.
Expedia would have started accepting cryptocurrencies since mid-2014 when it announced that hotel reservations could be canceled using Bitcoin, however, it is important to note that the company's vice president Michael Gulmann would have commented that this would only be a test phase that apparently it has already come to an end.
This refusal of Expedia to continue accepting payments in cryptocurrencies would mainly affect executives and workers in the IT industry, who usually receive at least a portion of their salary in cryptocurrencies.
In this sense, another well-known travel agency called Cheapair has decided to move from Coinbase to BitPay, with Jeff Klee, its CEO; declaring in Bitcoin.com that Coinbase would have informed them that they would no longer support solutions for the travel industry, and that from April 30, customers could no longer issue new orders using the Coinbase interface; which motivated Cheapair to migrate to BitPay, one of the most recognized means to accept payments in Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash.
Also, Cheapair has decided to incorporate Bitcoin Cash, DASH and Litecoin in addition to Bitcoin to cancel tariffs for airline tickets, as well as hotel expenses and reservations as of last May. In addition, Klee said that in recent months numerous customers have requested the website to add more alternative cryptocurrencies to cancel tickets and accommodation.
In addition to Cheapair, there are a large number of less popular websites with which customers could purchase their plane tickets and pay for their hotel reservations using Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, such as Destinia.com, Btctrip.com, Abitsky.com, Fluege .com, Nurflug.de and Agenciadeviajesvirtual.com
In line with this, many airlines have also decided to accept cryptocurrency payments directly, such as Flypeach.com from Japan, Airbaltic.com from Latvia, Fat.com.tw from Thailand and Cebupacificair.com from the Philippines.
Likewise, users could purchase plane tickets through gift cards acquired in cryptocurrencies using sites such as eGiftergiftoff, Gyft, Bitrefill.com and FlightGiftCard.com, so it can be seen that there are numerous alternatives for members of the crypto community who wish to pay for their Travel using digital currency, either for work or pleasure.
Throughout the last months, the speculation on the future of the cryptocurrencies has not been made wait due to the resounding descent of the value of the king of the industry; the Bitcoin. However, this type of initiative serves to popularize the use of the same and help to demolish myths about it, so we could expect more airlines and travel agencies recognized to join in the near future