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Emirates Airlines – the official airline of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – has announced in an official statement it is willing to accept cryptocurrencies like bitcoin as methods of payment for plane tickets and other merchandise. It will also unveil a new line of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) soon.
Emirates Airlines Opens Its Heart and Mind to BTC
The move is pushing the goals of bitcoin and its digital counterparts closer to being achieved. What many people likely forget is that while bitcoin and many of its crypto cousins have taken on either speculative or even hedge-like statuses in recent years, many of them were initially designed to serve as payment tools. They were built to push checks, credit cards, and fiat currencies to the side, but this has been a relatively slow journey given the volatility that continues to drag them down.
It is extremely hard to understand when bitcoin and its crypto family will go up or down when it comes to their prices. Many stores and companies have been reluctant to say “yes” when it comes to accepting crypto payments for this reason, and to a degree, we can’t blame them.
Consider the following scenario: someone walks into a store and buys $50 worth of merchandise with bitcoin. For one reason or another, the store doesn’t trade the BTC into fiat right away and about 24 hours go by. From there, the price of BTC goes down and that $50 becomes $40. The customer gets to keep everything he or she bought, but the store has lost money in the end. Is this a fair situation? Not everyone thinks so.
That’s what makes enterprises like Emirates Airlines so important. They realize the initial purposes of bitcoin and digital currencies and are trying to transform them into usable tools that everyday people can benefit from.
The company says the move is designed to make the firm a little more flexible in its payment processes and engage with customers on a deeper level. Emirates Airlines will be the second airline company to say “yes” to bitcoin and crypto after Lot Polish Airline did so in 2015.
In an interview, chief operating officer Adel Ahmed Al-Redhat explained:
With the metaverse, you will be able to transform your whole processes — whether it is in operation, training, sales on the website, or complete experience — into a metaverse-type application, but more importantly, making it interactive.
Paving the Way for the Future
Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum – chairman and chief executive at Emirates Airlines – also threw his two cents into the mix, commenting:
We are excited about the opportunities in the digital space of the future and are committing a significant investment in financial and resourcing terms to develop products and services using advanced technologies that will deliver on revenue, brand experience, and business efficiencies.
