9Flats, the Berlin-based vacation rental startup, is either joining the new wave of digital commerce or riding the PR wave and accepting the Bitcoin for customer payments.
Hosts/owners who rent their properties on the service to travellers will also have the ability to receive their payments in Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is the decentralized open source digital currency, first created in 2009 and which has captured attention in recent weeks again as a result of various economic woes continuing around the world.
It was developed and is maintained by a community of Bitcoin enthusiasts.
Anybody can generate bitcoins over the internet and, in theory, anybody can accept bitcoins. There is no bank involved as an intermediary, meaning there are no freezing of accounts and other financial service issues.
Payments are almost free of charge and can be exchanged to so-called real world currencies. But the exchange rate is volatile, but its backers and supporters claim it is will stablise.
In April 2013, 1 BTC (Bitcoin currency code) traded from $100–$260. Taking into account the total number of bitcoins mined, the monetary base of the bitcoin network stands at over $1 billion.
Having said that, Bitcoin is still an experimental currency.
9Flats CEO Stephan Uhrenbacher says:
"As a global platform we often face difficulties in transferring money to hosts in one of our 159 countries. Our hosts have asked repeatedly for other payment options. Bitcoin is a payment option which is easy to integrate with less transaction costs than other international payment methods.
"That's why we welcome and support this currency. We believe Bitcoin is a great way to transfer money, but not a secure way to store money."
Regardless of whether the guest decides to pay their booking in Euro or Bitcoin, the host can choose if they want to receive payment in Bitcoin.
The exchange rate is determined at the time of the payment by the guest and the payout is then made in Bitcoin. 9Flats converts Bitcoins into the respective currency (mostly Euro) at the moment of transaction.
This ensures that neither 9Fats nor the guest are put at risk of currency fluctuations of Bitcoin which are presently a big issue.
Here are the key reasons why 9Flats says it is accepting Bitcoin as form of payment:
- Payment costs are the single biggest expense for 9Flats as they accept payment from guests and transfer the money to hosts.
- 9Flats offer places in 159 countries and often the trouble is with international bank transfers. PayPal is not a universally popular form of payment as yet and in Russia, for example, it is not even possible to set up a PayPal account.
9flats says in their blog,
"Bitcoin integration was achieved faster and far easier than we had expected and now we are proud to offer such a simple and globally valid payment method to everyone.
"The only restriction is that we can only provide this as a payment method for instant bookable places.
"Of course we don’t know whether Bitcoins is going to be the currency of the future but we are amazed how well the concept works in practice and are looking forward to the first guests which decide to pay their bookings this way on 9Flats."
A video on how Bitcoin works: