Holidaymakers and residents will soon be able to fill up with cryptocurrencies in Croatia
Petrol station operator Tifon hopes that tourists on the Adriatic in particular will increasingly pay with cryptocurrencies.
Crypto payment service provider Electrocoin has teamed up with a Croatian petrol station operator to allow tourists and residents of the holiday destination to pay in cryptocurrencies when filling up in the future.
As the Croatian newspaper Poslovni Dnevnik reports, it will soon be possible to pay with the cryptocurrencies Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Stellar Lumens (XLM), XRP and EOS at 46 Tifon petrol stations. For this purpose, petrol station operator Tifon is integrating the Bitcoin News Trader crypto payment platform PayCek, which in turn is provided by Electrocoin.
Tifon finance director Ana Lokas is confident that tourists in particular will ensure the spread of crypto payments in Croatia, as they prefer to use digital payments anyway. Although the entire country is still classified as a risk area by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the infection figures have meanwhile fallen back below a value of 1,000 new infections per day. This makes it at least a little more likely that holidaymakers will return soon.
The country’s economy already seems to be preparing for this eventuality
Electrocoin founder Nikola Škorić, for example, says that „more and more serious companies are recognising the potential of cryptocurrencies“. He explains the process of crypto-payments for petrol as follows:
„For example, if a person refuels for 400 kuna (HRK) and wants to pay for it with cryptocurrencies, we inform Tifon via PayCek that the respective payment has been processed. Tifon is then credited with 400 kuna and is not exposed to any risk at any point.“
To this he adds:
„When Bitcoin was launched 10 years ago, it was originally conceived as a means of payment. […] Cryptocurrencies are often used as a means of investment, but through partnerships like with Tifon, and many more in the coming months, cryptocurrencies in Croatia are returning to their roots as a means of payment.“
Although Finance Director Lokas admits that crypto payments are still in their infancy in Croatia, the holiday destination is actually a pioneer in Europe when it comes to crypto. Two years ago, for example, a joint pilot project was carried out by Electrocoin and the Croatian Post, which enabled the population of the city of Zadar to convert their crypto assets into the national currency in three post offices. Blockchain project Telos, meanwhile, announced last year that it plans to „tokenise“ real estate worth $35 million in Croatia.