SEOUL, South Korea – South Korea and Taiwan have recently seen an unprecedented launch of bitcoin, for use in convenience stores. According to the website CoinDesk, a company called Coinplug is rolling out pre-paid bitcoin gift cards to around 24,000 convenience stores throughout South Korea, with 8,000 7-Eleven stores already participating in the program.
Last October, BitoEX launched a similar effort in Taiwan, establishing a fully operational bitcoin-purchasing service at 2,980 Family Mart stores, which has since expanded to more than 5,000 stores including OK MART and Hi-Life chains. BitoEX anticipates the total number of stores could reach 12,000 by March, with plans to expand to other countries in Asia.
Bitcoin cards are printed with values of 10,000, 30,000 and 50,000 South Korean won (approximately $10, $30 and $50). To protect against theft and deal with bitcoin's unpredictable price, the cards are activated only at point-of-sale. Selling physical cards greatly simplifies the process for consumers to purchase and use bitcoin as a currency.
The process works as follows: A customer purchases a card over the counter and the cashier prints out a receipt with an individual PIN code. The purchaser then redeems the bitcoin using either the okBitcard mobile app or the okBitcard website. The physical card itself does not carry any bitcoin value. Coinplug is also exploring other options addressing the trend of "online-to-offline" payments.
In the case of those who organized the large-scale effort to make bitcoin available over the counter at thousands of Taiwanese convenience stores, they found that the main hurdles were overcoming lack of knowledge about bitcoin, and local regulatory fears among mainstream businesses.
Taiwanese customers can use existing multi-service touchscreen kiosks located in convenience stores, enter the amount of bitcoin they wish to buy in Taiwanese dollars (plus a roughly $0.75 service fee) and their mobile phone number. The kiosks print a receipt for customers to take to the counter and pay with cash, while an SMS message is sent to the mobile number with a link to BitoEX's website. While there are still not many businesses accepting bitcoin in Taiwan so far, BitoEX plans to further promote the use of digital currency.