Norwegian Airlines is the low-cost air carrier that is headquartered in Oslo, Norway and is the new major airline that bets on cryptocurrency payments to increase its profit. As the latest news show, Norwegian allows customers to pay for air tickets using cryptocurrency now and hopes that it will help improve results of the company. An interview with the CEO of the crypto exchange Norwegian Block Exchange (NBX) in the crypto news today suggests this.
As per the interview which is published by the local business newspaper DN, the NBX boss Stig Kjos-Mathisen said that “everything is ready from our side” and that the major airline is now prepared for the long-awaited implementation of ticket purchases with crypto.
The communications director at Norwegian, Lasse Sandaker-Nielsen, was a bit more hesitant to offer specifics and only said that the team is “working on a solution, but we don’t have anything concrete to report about a launch.”
The implementation of a crypto payment solution is seen as a new attempt which can help the airline further cut costs and improve its profitability, preventing the financial difficulties of becoming higher. Ever since the father and founder of the airline Bjorn Kjos stepped down as CEO, the major airline has been in trouble in terms of financials.
Meanwhile, the NBX CEO further explained that airlines right now pay 1.5% to 2.5% of the ticket price as a fee to credit card companies and that this cost is carried by the consumer. Meanwhile, tickets are bought 30 to 60 days before a trip is made but due to credit card companies that withhold the payments until the time of the departure, the major airline is forced to arrange costly financing from other sources in the meantime.
“Both of these costs will disappear with the implementation of crypto payments,” Kjos-Mathisen said, expressing some optimism on the potential for the payment solution. “If this ends up being cheaper for merchants, and easier and faster for consumers, it can get big. It’s impossible to say how big, but we will be a serious actor who is early in the game.”
NBX now supports trading in BTC/USDC, ETH/USDC, ETH/BTC as well as fiat trading in Bitcoin/Norwegian kroner. It is regulated by the Norwegian Financial Supervisory Authority.
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