The Canadian town of Innisfil, Ontario has announced it started accepting bitcoin as a payment option for property tax payments, for a one-year trial that’s going to start next month, in April. The payment option comes through a partnership with a Toronto-based cryptocurrency trading firm, Coinberry.
According to the municipality’s announcement, its 36,000 residents will soon be able to pay using the flagship cryptocurrency through its website, and other cryptocurrency payments options may soon follow. These include bitcoin Cash (BCH), ether (ETH), litecoin (LTC) and XRP.
These payments will be processed thanks to Coinberry’s cryptocurrency payment solution, Coinberry Pay. The funds received in cryptocurrency will be processed “in accordance with strict adherence to existing financial regulatory requirements,” and instantly converted into Canadian dollars.
This, as the municipality will only handle CAD and Coinberry, a Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC)-registered firm, will handle the cryptocurrency. Innisfil’s mayor, Lynn Dolin, was quoted as saying:
There’s no doubt that cryptocurrency is growing in usage and popularity. By getting into this now, we are making sure our municipality is ahead of the game, and signaling to the world that we truly are a future-ready and innovative community.
Notably paying taxes with cryptocurrency is starting to become an option. In November of last year the state of Ohio revealed it was going to start accepting bitcoin payments for taxes, through a partnership with crypto payments processor BitPay.
The state’s service currently only allows businesses to pay their taxes with BTC, and reports showed only two used the flagship cryptocurrency to pay their taxes by February, one of them being Overstock. Ohio’s service is reportedly going to be extended to individuals in the future.
