Back in the day, people would show up at the Coinstar kiosk with a bag of pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters, then watch the machine spit out cold hard cash, in return. Now, many Coinstar users opt instead to get crypto instead of plain money.
According to Fortune, from 2019 until now the only cryptocurrency available at Coinstar kiosks was Bitcoin. It was the very first digital asset, and launched in 2009, says CoinDesk. Now, Coinstar is meeting customer requests to exchange cash for other types of cryptocurrency, including Dogecoin, Chainlink, Ethereum, Lumens, Polygon, and Litecoin.
Although the Coinstar experience is largely user-friendly, customers should be prepared to upload a photo of their driver’s license, as well as a selfie, in order to establish a Coinme wallet. This is called a “Know Your Customer” verification. The kiosk will spit out a voucher receipt, and it can be redeemed using Coinme (on the website or the app). That’s taking cyber-shopping to a whole new level.
