Trading fish and chips for bitcoin — why this small coastal town takeaway shop has cryptocurrency as a payment option

It is not something you would expect to find walking into a small coastal town’s fish and chip shop, but at Yeppoon’s Seagulls Takeaway there are three options for payment – cash, card or cryptocurrency.

Part-owner and manager Clint Horsfall began offering the method of payment a couple of weeks ago.

Mr Horsfall said he was inspired to trial the system, after hearing about retailers in other areas of the country rolling it out.

“I myself am trying to dabble into it … to see if it works or what all the hype is about” he said. 

Mr Horsfall said it was relatively easy to install, as it was all application-based.

“I create an account, and if someone does want to pay with crypto, I just bring up my app, choose a currency I want to trade in, and that brings up a QR code for them to scan on their app.

“They just show me the approved payment and, that’s it, it’s done.”

Though he has only had one customer (a visitor from Townsville) use it so far, Mr Horsfall said he thought cryptocurrency would become more “mainstream” in the future, and he wanted to be ahead of the curve.

“[Though] it does fluctuate in price quite a bit, so I am taking a risk of course.”

Ingrid Cornelis, Mr Horsfall’s mother and co-owner of the business, said she also believed cryptocurrency payment would be useful to have in the future, if a proposed development of Great Keppel Island went ahead.

“If it goes ahead, we’re going to get a lot of people from overseas and interstate that may use it,” Ms Cornelis said.

“[But] I [also] think it’s going to be a headache for the accountant, maybe.”

The Capricornia Chamber of Commerce said it was not aware of any other businesses in the region following suit. 

RMIT University professor Ellie Rennie says there have been many recent developments in payment systems for retail cryptocurrency transactions. (Supplied: Pixabay)

Could we see more of this in the future?

RMIT University Professor Ellie Rennie said Australia could see more retailers offering cryptocurrency as a payment option in the future, but there were still regulatory issues to iron out.

“Many governments around the world, including Australia, are looking at developing their own central bank digital currency,” Professor Rennie said. 

“For instance, an Australian dollar that you would be able to have custody of in a crypto wallet.

“That doesn’t exist in Australia yet, but there have certainly been pilots and experiments by the Reserve Bank to look at that.

“We could have something like that, or we could end up in a situation where they could be issued by the private banking sector, under regulations.”

Professor Rennie said as some countries, like Venezuela, make bitcoin legal tender, that then requires retailers to accept it as payment.

“Therefore there’s been a lot of development with the payment system for retail transactions, as a result of what’s occurring in South America.”

This news is republished from another source. You can check the original article here.

Be the first to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.


*