UATP (Universal Air Travel Plan) has announced it will be looking into ways for customers to pay for their flights and travel with Bitcoin. It was announced earlier this month that UATP will be teaming up with Bitnet to create the unique service as there are not many travel options that take Bitcoin users into consideration. It is also a quite large service as it covers most of the main airlines available and should allow easy and safe flights all paid for in Bitcoin. It will cover most brands and will work with other travel agencies in order to revolutionise travel.
This is against traditional methods of payment such as credit card, bank transfers and other fiat options. However it is still under development and it is not certain whether they will incorporate all the needs of the average consumer and how it will be arranged to send large required quantities of Bitcoin over. There is also the problem of the price changes which means if someone sent Bitcoin and the price went down before the service received it the money would be lost and they would have to pay more.
The idea behind it is a fascinating one as it is very rarely tried and even rarer a success. It is not also sure whether the airline sites will add an option to pay with Bitcoin on their site as it would require many altercations and a much harder to accomplish rather than just sticking to fiat. However the Bitcoin option also has a risky option as it means they would have to spend a lot of time to create the new service. It could add a lot of customers on flights as many do already use the cryptocurrency and the option could mean a boom in air travel. It depends on how many will use the service and how much they may have to pay. Air Baltic already uses the Bitcoin advantage and allows easy and safe flight payments. There are already many other airlines that are looking into Bitcoin as an easy and safe way for transactions.
Cryptocurrency is deemed reliable as it is very secure and has easy transactions and has a little to no fee for transferring Bitcoin. This could revolutionize countries such as Africa where majority of the population is illiterate and do not have bank accounts. Bitcoin is very volatile which means if they store Bitcoin and if the price falls they could lose a lot of their profit. It makes life quite easy for cabin crews as they won’t have to collect multiple currencies and have to make sure that they have received enough. It is not confirmed that the service will be up and running in all the airlines but it is highly likely as the positives outweigh the negatives.
Hopefully, in the near future, many airlines will start accepting Bitcoin and will create a boom in the airline industry and mean that many more Bitcoin-based services will be created and hopefully increase the price of Bitcoin.
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