10,000 UK Taxis to Take Crypto Payments on ETH
2 min read
Mobile payments firm HIPS and Nordic taxi payment rail The Payment House have partnered to allow cabs in the UK and Scandinavia to accept cryptocurrencies over the ETH blockchain, according to an announcement Monday.
The deal means that 10,000 taxis in the UK, and 20,000 in Scandinavia can use the payment gateway after it debuts in a beta test in November.
The platform will initially accept HIPS’ Merchant token (MTO), which is issued on ETH under its ERC-20 standard, and the stablecoin USD Coin (USDC). Support for other cryptocurrencies is coming, according to the announcement.
“We believe that the consumer-oriented features of the MTO are the missing piece for crypto payments to have a market penetration and mass adoption among mainstream consumers, said John Cavebring, CEO of HIPS.
The system, which comprises the HIPS Merchant Protocol, the HMP-gateway platform, and its token, is described as “a solution that introduces consumer protection concepts from the traditional card payment industry to the ETH blockchain, among others,” in the statement.
Crypto payments are here
The HIPS system joins a host of payment solutions allowing crypto to be used as payment for everything from TIME magazine subscriptions to organic vegetables.
In November 2020, PayPal made the ground-breaking move to introduce crypto payments in BTC and other cryptocurrencies.
Launched earlier this month, the HIPS system is designed for any blockchain with support for smart contracts, which means that in the future it will use not only ETH but also Cardano and Solana, among others.
In fact, the protocol, which has “near real-time transaction speeds” is not only built for ETH, but also on Solana, which is described in the statement as “a blazingly fast public blockchain which can support over 50,000 transactions per second, has block times of 400 milliseconds and a transaction cost of roughly $0.00001.”
That’s quick enough for even the shortest cab ride.
