Travala, a service that lets its users pay for hotel stays with digital currency, has expanded its crypto payment options by adding support of NEM (XEM) tokens.
Travel Platform Travala Expands Payment Options With XEM https://t.co/eljF3WP6vC pic.twitter.com/lrrW04cBZA — Criptomonedasyeconomia (@Economiaenllam1) January 24, 2020
On January 22, it has been reported by Travala that the NEM Foundation and Travala.com announced the integration of XEM with the travel company’s platform.
As such, XEM joined over 20 other digital currencies supported by Travala’s platform, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Tron (TRX), stablecoin Tether (USDT), privacy-focused token Monero (XMR) and others.
<img width="2000" height="1500" src="https://i2.wp.com/www.cryptonewspoint.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/nem-Logo.png?fit=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-9350 lazyload" />
However, the move comes in the wake of Travala’s announcement that it began accepting USDT as a valid form of payment at its two million linked properties.
In November 2019, Travala entered a partnership with Booking.com, allowing users to book 90,000 different destinations by using cryptocurrencies.
Matt Luczynski, the CEO of Travala, commented:
“This partnership allows our users to access Booking.com’s accommodation listings, as well as the listings from several other leading travel suppliers, which is a fantastic use case for our own AVA token and another huge step towards mass cryptocurrency adoption.”
After the partnership, Travala saw its revenue for the month of December goes up by over 33.5% month-on-month. Over 9% of December’s bookings were paid in Travala’s proprietary token, AVA.
Furthermore, 28% of them were paid in BTC, 8% in Bitcoin Cash (BCH), 37% with a credit card and PayPal, while the rest with other crypto assets.
Likewise, Travala told that the most used digital currency on the platform has been Bitcoin so far, and the proportion of customers who pay with cryptocurrencies has surpassed 60%.
The company commented:
“Due to the nature of the hotel industry prices can change rapidly so we have a small time window to receive payments and process the bookings. We solved this by processing bookings on confirming status instead of waiting for full confirmations. This is especially important when accepting Bitcoin payments.”
<img width="1540" height="866" src="https://i0.wp.com/www.cryptonewspoint.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/onlinebooking.jpg?fit=1024%2C576&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-9351 lazyload" />
Travala also named refundable bookings with crypto payments as one of the challenges, due to volatility. As such, the company decided to make refunds for refundable bookings made with crypto in stablecoins.
At the same time, Travala has ostensibly seen much higher-than-industry-average bookings made with digital currencies.
Thus, Travala said:
“It is refreshing to know that each time we take a booking with cryptocurrency payments we avoid all the normal issues with traditional payment methods such as fraudulent payments and bad actor disputes.”
Source: blog.travala.com | cointelegraph.com
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