The online bus ticket booking portal eTravelSmart has partnered with India’s most popular bitcoin wallet and merchant payment processor Unocoin to allow users in the country to purchase tickets using bitcoin. eTravelSmart told Cointelegraph in an interview:
“We need to support all possible safe, simple and reliable payment solutions to our customers while purchasing bus tickets in our portal. Bitcoin community and user base in India is increasing. which cannot be ignored. So we have taken a decision to accept bitcoin payments along with other payment gateways.”
The company explained that the bitcoin community and industry in India is growing, and that bitcoin, as both a currency and technology, is being understood by the Indian population. The portal is already seeing a few sales in bitcoin and expects an increase in sales each month. The eTravelSmart team told CT:
“[The] Bitcoin community in India is maturing and people started understanding it now. I see many bitcoin meetups happening in India. Now we are doing sales around five transactions, worth less than one bitcoin per month. We expect the sales [to] double month on month in coming days.”
In choosing which merchant payment processor to work with, the eTravelSmart team was careful in selecting companies that were fully compliant with India’s Bitcoin regulations to ensure that the customers’ payments are secure.
The company has also explained that they chose to accept bitcoin in order to differentiate from its competitors. By implementing a globally trending technology, the company hopes to meet all customer needs. eTravelSmart stated:
“[The] eTravelSmart online bus ticket booking portal in India is unique and always thinks of customer needs. We always want to give best in the industry, solve customer concerns and problems in online booking. We have introduced many unique features which are not there in any other competitor websites in India.”