Airbnb May Accept Crypto Payments

By Kevin • January 21, 2022 1:03 pm • Comments

Airbnb is a popular platform that provides a marketplace for lodging and home sharing that currently operates in the majority of countries in the world.

The CEO Brian Chesky recently hinted in a tweet that the company may be looking into accepting cryptocurrencies as a payment method as that was one of the top feature requests from users for 2022.

The company had conducted online questionnaires to understand which requests had the highest demand  in order to come to the conclusion that people wanted to be able to pay in a variety of different tokens for home sharing services.

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This is not the first time that the company was asked for this feature or had discussed about the emerging industry.

Back in November of last year, the CEO had mentioned that the company had already started looking into possible solutions in the past as they believe that there is a digital revolution that they could take a part of.

IndianExpress.com reports:

Chesky tweeted: “If Airbnb could launch anything in 2022, what would it be?”

He also revealed that he received 4,000 suggestions, noting that the most popular one is for his company to accept crypto payments, adding that, “crypto payments is inclusive of a variety of token ideas.”

Airbnb currently has more than 5.6 million listings worldwide.

According to the company’s website, since its launch in 2007, Airbnb has served more than 1 billion customers and more than 4 million hosts have listed their properties on the platform.

It should be noted that Airbnb currently accepts Visa, MasterCard, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and PayPal as payment methods.

The executive further added: “The key is when regular people understand how the new technology improved their lives, beyond the initial excitement.

I’m really excited about certain applications that regular people could use to live a better daily life.”

The introduction of this payment option will also have more tangible benefits than just adding an additional payment method for the company.

Often times, crypto payments are preferred when users book lodging from different countries where typically issues arise due to differences in the currency.

With crypto payments, this issue would be resolved entirely.

This change could also help Airbnb to be more business competitive with another company called DTravel which is a decentralized home rental firm founded by former Airbnb and Expedia employees.

Airbnb is a major company that has joined the long list of well known businesses that are openly embracing cryptocurrencies.

For example, earlier in the week, popular movie theatre chain AMC recently announced that they would be open to accepting the Shiba Inu token as a method to purchase movie tickets online.

CryptoPotato.com shares additional examples:

Meanwhile, last year saw a number of companies integrate crypto payment options.

As reported in August 2021, popular German fashion company Philipp Plein International AG said it will allow customers to buy products with 15 different cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin and ether.

Similarly, American fintech company Verifone partnered with bitcoin payment service provider BitPay in September to make crypto payment options available to its clients in the United States.

With Airbnb’s hint of the possible upcoming launch of this new payment method, this may also help encourage home sharing rival VRBO to also do the same.

If the two largest home sharing companies in the market are on board with embracing the crypto industry, this would make another successful example where blockchain technologies transformed a particular industry such as the home sharing industry.

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