Independent Grocers of Australia (IGA), a chain of independently-owned supermarkets, has teamed up with TravelbyBit to offer customers the opportunity to pay for goods in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Brisbane-based TravelbyBit, which offers travel booking services using bitcoin, litecoin and Binance’s BNB coin, collaborated with the IGA Xpress store in Bowen Hills, Brisbane, to integrate its point-of-sale system, reported Nugget News on Friday.

In an interview with TravelbyBit co-founder Caleb Yeoh told Nugget that his company aimed to support “the little guy” and “the decentralized option”. He added:

Regardless of whether I’m buying eggs, milk, fruit, or vegetables, I now have a way to pay for my groceries with cryptocurrency. The same goes for any other cryptocurrency owners shopping at Bowen Hills IGA.

Non-Profit Integration

Yeoh said TravelbyBit would receive no profit from its point-of-sale integration service, but hoped that it would prove successful in introducing merchants to the crypto alternative form of payment.

He added:

It all comes down to education. Introducing merchants to the world of cryptocurrency so that they may appreciate the benefits in their own time.

There are more than 1,400 IGA stores nationwide and Yeoh said he was aiming to introduce the technology to other branches, having been in contact with two other store operators. 

Currently TravelbyBit has integrated its point-of-sale system with around three-hundred merchants in Australia, which can be found on a map on the company’s website.
https://travelbybit.com/merchants

Other Point-of-Sale Projects

Last year, crypto-exchange group Binance announced it had invested $2.5 million in TravelbyBit to build point-of-sale systems in global airports, following the success of its installation in Brisbane Airport.