You Can Now Buy Coca-Cola with Bitcoin!

More than 2,000 vending machines in Australia and New Zealand will let customers buy a Coke with bitcoin.
Coca-Cola Amatil, the Asia-Pacific bottling giant, has partnered with digital assets platform Centrapay to integrate bitcoin as a payment option from its vending machines across Australia and New Zealand.

According to a press release on Tuesday, Amatil’s customers now have Bitcoin and other digital assets as a payment option in their Sylo Smart Wallet, which they can use at any of the 2,000+ vending machines installed across Australia and New Zealand. The release did not include some of the other cryptocurrencies that are supported in the wallet.

Coca Cola Amatil is the largest bottler and distributor in the Asia Pacific. The firm currently supports 140 brands and has an estimated 270 million consumers, which will undoubtedly give bitcoin and cryptocurrencies more exposure.

Centrapay, on the other hand, is a digital asset platform that helps consumers and merchants exchange value daily through the use of cryptocurrencies.

According to Jerome Faury, Centrapay CEO, poor user experiences and complexities with integration are barriers to the adoption of cryptocurrencies and web 3 technologies.

The outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has seemingly created an excellent opportunity for cryptocurrencies as a means of exchange since they promote contactless payments suggested by WHO.

The integration of cryptocurrencies into the Sylo Smart Wallet ensures that customers only have to scan a QR code payment stick on the vending machines through their phone’s camera (as long as Sylo Smart Wallet is installed). This significantly reduces the number of times people need to touch the vending machine to just once whenever they want to make a purchase.

The firms believe that the move will help curtail the spread of the coronavirus that continues to plague countries across the world, with 6.93M confirmed cases and more than 400k deaths.

Since the use of cryptocurrencies helps to reduce physical contact with the vending machines, the integration helps to address hygiene concerns surrounding the spread of the virus.

June 11, 2020