US-based flight aggregator CheapAir, a company that’s been accepting Bitcoin (BTC) payments since 2013, has recently revealed it’s now going to accept three other cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Dash, and Litecoin.
According to a recently released press release, the company has decided to start accepting these three cryptocurrencies partly due to customer demand. The document notes that in the past 12 to 18 months, interest in cryptocurrencies surged, to the point various altcoins were created with the purpose of improving upon some of bitcoin’s shortcomings.
CheapAir’s CEO, Jeff Klee, stated:
“Our cryptocurrency customers tend to be very vocal about what they want, something we appreciate very much. Over the last six months, we’ve seen a huge uptick in the number of customers requesting alternative currencies, so we’ve worked hard to integrate the three that were most requested.”
The company has in the past revealed it needs to convert most of the Bitcoins it receives as payment to fiat currencies in order to pay its partners – which include hotels and airlines – as these don’t accept cryptocurrencies.
In CheapAir’s press release, Klee acknowledged that accepting cryptocurrencies while dealing with suppliers who want to be paid in fiat is challenging, but noted accepting Bitcoin payments made it easier to expand and accept other cryptos. He said:
“We already had the plumbing in place to make digital currency payments work seamlessly for our customers and suppliers. That made adding Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Dash a relatively minor endeavor for our development team, but a huge benefit for our crypto customers.”
As covered the company has, earlier this year, asked for customer feedback on which cryptocurrency payment processor it should go with after San Francisco-based Coinbase revealed it was shutting down its Merchant Tools solution.
The company has in the past revealed that accepting bitcoin affected sales in both directions. Per CheapAir, sales dropped when Bitcoin’s price plummeted, but surged when the cryptocurrency hit a new all-time high. According to data from CryptoCompare, the flagship cryptocurrency surged to nearly $20,000 in mid-December.
Coinbase’s decision to shut down Merchant Tools in favor of Coinbase commerce, as covered, affected other companies. One of them was Reddit, which temporarily stopped accepting BTC payments because of it. Since then, the social media website has brought back payments in the flagship cryptocurrency, and added Ethereum and Litecoin as options.
