Australians Will Buy Fuel And Chips With Crypto

Australians will buy fuel and chips with crypto across 175 locations of a chain of stations and stores.

Across its 175 sites in Victoria, South Australia (SA), and Western Australia, the chain of petrol stations and convenience stores On The Run (OTR) has started taking bitcoin payments (WA).

Australians Will Buy Fuel And Chips With Crypto

As was previously mentioned, the action is a result of a partnership between DataMesh, a Sydney-based provider of payment solutions, and OTR, a Singapore-based exchange called Crypto.com.

Datamesh provided the point of sale terminals, the exchange provided its Pay Merchant service as a payment settlement layer.

According to Asia & Pacific general manager of Crypto.com Karl Mohan, it only took eight weeks to the point of actually creating a fully scalable production-ready environment from the time of proof of concept.

Mohan emphasized that although the technology has first been placed at 175 OTR businesses, the crypto payments service is operationally ready to go much wider.

“What happens now is any merchant, whether you’re a cafe owner or someone who runs thousands of stores, could just plug and play,” he said.

Planning To Expand

Peregrine Corp, the parent company of OTR, wants to extend the crypto payment service to 250 new businesses across Australia in addition to the aforementioned existing 175 ones, including Subway, Oporto, and Krispy Kreme.

Mohan added that in this case, Crypto.com charges no fees for the transactions. The merchant, who will choose their own prices, will charge fees, though. Such could imply that transaction costs might be comparable to those of fiat card payments.

When asked about the requirements for widespread adoption of cryptocurrency payments in Australia, particularly in light of the tax implications of doing so, Mohan suggested that using a stablecoin backed by the Australian dollar might be the answer:

“So of course, Bitcoin and Ethereum because of their market capitalization are already on the top of the list. But an overwhelming number of consumers have said they are ready to accept and actually start paying with Australian stablecoins.”

“We’ve made the system available and if you’ve seen ANZ announce the Australian dollar stablecoin, and we see these types of stablecoins becoming available, I really believe that it will become mainstream,” stated Mohan.

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