Emirates Airline Plans To Accept Bitcoin Payments

The Dubai airline Emirates plans to accept Bitcoin payments in the future, as well as launch NFTs on the website, as per a report.

Emirates Airline Plans To Add Bitcoin As A Payment Service

As reported by Arab News, one of the world’s largest airlines has shown intent to add crypto payments and offer NFTs for trading on the company’s website.

The Emirates’ Chief Operating Officer (COO), Adel Ahmed Al-Redha, revealed at the Arabian Travel Market that the firm will hire new staff for their metaverse and non-fungible token ambitions.

The COO said:

With the metaverse, you will be able to transform your whole processes — whether it is in operation, training, sales on the website, or complete experience — into a metaverse type application, but more importantly making it interactive.

The biggest UAE airline is also looking to explore the application of blockchain tech in tracing airplane records. Additionally, Al-Redha spoke about plans to add Bitcoin as a payment option as well.

The executive also made a mention of how the airline industry has been slowly making a comeback as the average number of travelers is climbing up.

Emirates isn’t the first airline to have embraced digital technologies like the blockchain and crypto payment services.

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In February of 2021, Air France collaborated with different organizations on a blockchain solution to verify COVID test results.

Also, Latvia’s airBaltic added Dogecoin and Ethereum as new payment options in March of the same year. The airline had already been accepting BTC since 2014.

Offering crypto as a payment option and adding NFT collectibles to the website is part of Emirates’ strategy to connect better with its customers today.

BTC Price

At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s price floats around $30.7k, down 13% in the last seven days. Over the past month, the crypto has lost 23% in value.

The below chart shows the trend in the price of the coin over the last five days.

The price of the crypto seems to have made some recovery from the plunge | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView

Over the past week, BTC has been crashing down, as have been most of the rest of the crypto and financial markets.

Yesterday, the cryptocurrency even plunged below the $26k level, reaching prices that haven’t been seen since December 2020.

Related Reading | Bitcoin Is Being Pummeled – Will Tesla And MicroStrategy Sell Their BTC?

So far today, the coin has showed some speedy recovery, breaking past the $30k mark once again, and looking to be approaching a retest of $31k.

At the moment, however, it’s unclear whether this recovery will last or if it was a temporary bounce, with more downside to follow soon.

Featured image from Unsplash.com, chart from TradingView.com