Cryptocurrencies Rally

Bakkt and Quiznos Restaurants Partner for In-Store Payments using Bitcoin

Bakkt, the digital asset marketplace, has announced a pilot partnership with the quick-service restaurant chain Quiznos to enable Quiznos users to pay for their bills using bitcoin. This will be launched at select physical locations for now and will be tried out on a pilot basis to see how the user reception is and also to see what kind of problems would be faced by the restaurants and the users.

The pilot will be carried out across a few locations of Quiznos in the Denver region where the users will be able to choose a new and innovative payment method to pay for their next meal using the Bakkt App. Those who download the app, buy bitcoin through the app and also pay for their meal at Quiznos would be able to avail $15 worth of bitcoin through the app.

“This is an exciting tentpole moment for us as we connect the next generation of customer experiences to the digital economy,” said Sheela Zemlin, Chief Revenue Officer at Bakkt. “Through this partnership, we are introducing unique experiences to Quiznos customers by enabling them to take advantage of new ways to interact with digital assets and bringing bitcoin utility to the mainstream consumer market. We will closely watch how this pilot performs, with the potential to expand the partnership to additional Quiznos locations across the country.”

Last few years, there have been several efforts to bring bitcoin into the mainstream but so far, it has not yielded many results. Bitcoin has a lot of volatility which brings into question how normal users would be able to use it as a payment option in the long term. It is this volatility that has been throwing off mainstream users and the solution for this seems to be coming in the form of stablecoins. While many in the crypto ecosystem continue to believe that bitcoin can be used for payments, stablecoins would likely be the ones that would be ultimately used for payments with bitcoin continuing to be a purely speculative instrument.

This is yet another attempt by a crypto firm to try and bring bitcoin into mainstream usage and it remains to be seen how the public would respond to this. Though it may initially gain some traction purely out of curiosity, sooner than later the volatility in the BTC prices is likely to put off most users.