Starting Thursday, the Belgium-based parking startup Seety is allowing customers in Antwerp and Brussels to pay for both parking and parking tickets using Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, according to Coin Telegraph.
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Customers can use crypto “coins” to purchase Seety credits on the app, for no additional fee. They can choose from several different crypto options: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, Litecoin, Dai, and USD Coin.
Users will also still be allowed to pay through traditional methods.
The company, which already has more than 350,000 users, is banking on increased customer demand for crypto payments as the currencies become more environmentally friendly.
This is not the first time companies have deployed crypto to pay for micro-transactions. In 2014, a user on Reddit posted that he had paid a parking ticket with Bitcoin using the online marketplace Brawker.
The adoption of crypto as a payment method for everyday goods and services has soared in recent months, with users now being able to buy at-home COVID-19 tests, furniture, and even pornography.
In 2014, the U.S. digital retailer Overstock began accepting payments in Bitcoin, and in May, Meitu, a Chinese tech company, allowed $22.1 million of Ether transactions on its platforms and $17.9 million in Bitcoin transactions. In the first half of 2021, Visa reported more than $1 billion in spending from crypto-linked cards alone.
Industry observers say that blockchain technology can also resolve other inefficiencies in parking by offering more decentralized parking applications that would store parking data more optimally and notify drivers about parking spots as soon as they become available.
