Electronics giant Samsung has recently started accepting cryptocurrency payments in Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania, and is reportedly going to start accepting various cryptos on other regions in the future.
According to a blog post published by cryptocurrency payment processor CopPay, Samsung is now accepting bitcoin (BTC), litecoin (LTC), ethereum (ETH), dash (DASH), ripple (XRP), NEM (XEM) and steem (STEEM) in its Baltic region stores. The post reads:
Customers in Tallinn, Riga, Vilnius and Kaunas can buy Samsung smartphones, tablets, laptops, TV-sets, and more with digital money.
Per CopPay, there’s a “growing trend toward business digitalization and allowing customer to pay for goods and services in cryptocurrency,” a trend that the electronics giant is seemingly joining.
The European cryptocurrency payment processor further noted that the “crypto-payment feature will be available soon at Samsung’s internet stores,” presumably meaning users outside of the Baltic region will be able to buy smartphones, tablets, laptops, and more using cryptocurrency.
Cryptocurrencies have been notably growing in popularity in the Baltic states, with most of them having relatively lax regulations towards the sector. In Latvia, as CryptoGlobe covered, the government may impose a 20% capital gains tax on crypto transactions.
While regulators in these countries have warned that investing in cryptocurrencies is risky and that these aren’t recognized as legal tender, it’s seemingly legal to buy, sell, and hold cryptocurrencies.
Samsung itself has been slowly entering the cryptocurrency space. Earlier this year, it started producing cryptocurrency mining chips. In April, the South-Koran giant revealed it was looking into distributed ledger technology to improve efficiency for its massive global shipments network.
It’s worth pointing out that CopPay lets merchants who use its services either keep received funds in crypto, trade them for their equivalent in fiat, or a mixture of both options. Whether Samsung will keep the cryptocurrencies it receives is unclear.
