103-year-old fashion label Balenciaga is getting ready to start accepting Bitcoin and Ethereum as payment methods.

Balenciaga is “a luxury fashion house founded in 1919 by the Spanish designer Cristóbal Balenciaga in San Sebastian, Spain and bought afterwards by French luxury group Kering.” Kering is “a French-based multinational corporation specializing in luxury goods. It owns the luxury brands Balenciaga, Bottega Veneta, Gucci, Alexander McQueen and Yves Saint Laurent.”

According to a report by Women’s Wear Daily (WWD), “the brand will now accept crypto at its flagship stores, including on Madison Avenue in New York and Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, as well as on balenciaga.com”. Furthermore, the company says that “other regions and e-commerce will follow.”

The WWD report went on to say that “the fashion house is still deciding what payment solutions provider it will use, but it will accept currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum to begin with and other currencies will be added in due course.”

Balenciaga does not appear to be too concerned about the fact that we are currently in a bear market:

“Balenciaga is thinking long-term about crypto, and fluctuations in currency value are nothing new.“

As for Gucci, which is also owned by Kering, according to a report published by Vogue Business on May 4, it will accept crypto as a means of payment in several of its U.S. stores by the end of May, and it is planning to extend this program to all of its directly operated North American stores by the end of the summer.

Per the Vogue Business report, ”in-store crypto payments will be made with a link sent via email to the customer” and “the link contains a QR code that allows them to execute the payment from their crypto wallet.”

The pilot program will launch this month at the following U.S. Gucci stores: “Wooster Street in New York, Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles, Miami Design District, Phipps Plaza in Atlanta and The Shops at Crystals in Las Vegas.”

It seems that Gucci will be accepting crypto with the help of crypto payment processor BitPay. This means that the following 12 cryptoassets will be supported: Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Dogecoin (DOGE), Shiba Inu ($SHIB), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), and five USD-pegged stable coins (BUSD, DAI, GUSD, USDP, and USDC).

The Vogue Business report also mentioned that Gucci has “established itself as an early adopter of Web3 technologies, which include blockchain, and crypto payments mark another step toward Gucci blending its existing physical presence with its emerging Web3 efforts.”

Marco Bizzarri, Gucci president and CEO, said in a statement:

“Gucci is always looking to embrace new technologies when they can provide an enhanced experience for our customers. Now that we are able to integrate cryptocurrencies within our payment system, it is a natural evolution for those customers who would like to have this option available to them.“

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Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed by the author, or any people mentioned in this article, are for informational purposes only, and they do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice. Investing in or trading cryptoassets comes with a risk of financial loss.

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