There have been rumours about Uber – the popular on-demand car service starting to accept Bitcoin. But as per the latest communication with the company’s support team, Uber has made it clear that the company will not be making any changes to the current model and it will continue to accept payments through standard credit cards.
The company, Uber Technologies Inc. hit the limelight after it disrupted the traditional taxi service by introducing a unique on-demand car service where one can summon a ride using Uber application on their smart phone. Started in San Francisco over 6 years ago, the company has now expanded to over 300 cities in 57 countries.
The rumour about Uber’s plans to accept Bitcoin payments was kicked off by a post on the photo sharing site – Imgur. The photograph of an alleged email exchange between one of the Uber customers and the company’s help desk. For a query about using Bitcoin for payments over the application, the company seems to have responded saying that they are working on it.
Soon after the rumours started circulating, the company has issued a statement saying they are not looking at incorporating Bitcoin payments anytime soon. However, it will not be hard for Uber to incorporate Bitcoin payments as the existing payment processors Adyen and Braintree who work along with Uber and other start-ups have already started supporting Bitcoin payments.
Adyen, which also caters to Airbnb, Spotify and other major companies has recently partnered with BitPay to process Bitcoin transactions. Also, Uber has been working on overcoming the challenges posed by different markets and Bitcoin may be the way to go.
Recently Uber had issues in India due to the existing Reserve Bank of India regulations that doesn’t allow Indian cards to be used on payment gateways that doesn’t support two factor authentication. Uber had to overcome it by partnering with a local fiat currency wallet service provider Paytm.