The hard fork cryptocurrency of Bitcoin will be accepted in more than 2,000 supermarkets in the United States.
The North American supermarket chain Kroger accepts payments in cryptocurrencies before the Christmas season.
According to an official announcement on November 5, the main retailer will accept Bitcoin Cash (BCH) in all its stores: Baker’s, City Market, Dillons, Fred Meyer, QFC and others, as well as for online purchases.
Rodney McMullen, CEO of Kroger, said the initiative was driven by increased demand for electronic payments:
“During the pandemic, cashless payments increased and we see cryptocurrency as a natural progression from the tendency to deal less with physical money. "In 2018, Kroger severed relationships with major payment processor Visa, citing high fees at the point of sale. The retailer finally restored the relationship in 2019, after Kroger negotiated new terms.
Kroger had been involved in the crypto space before; In 2020, the company began offering Bitcoin (BTC) rewards in its store through the crypto-based rewards platform Lolli.
According to the announcement, Kroger “will exchange the cryptocurrency for stablecoins near the point of reception, but does not rule out the possibility of keeping a percentage of it on its balance sheet.”
Bitcoin Cash is a cryptocurrency-based proof-of-work consensus engine that was created through a hard fork of the Bitcoin blockchain. It was originally designed to solve many of Bitcoin’s long-standing problems, including the speed of transactions. The rigid fork was a controversial move, with many asserting that the BCH was more subject to centralization among miners, thanks to its larger block sizes.
Crypto has gradually made its way into the vertical market in a number of ways. In 2019, Safeway, another major US supermarket chain, started offering Bitcoin rewards through Lolli, like Kroger.
Earlier this summer, ATM crypto company Coin Cloud announced that it was preparing to install machines in 29 H-E-B supermarkets in Houston, Texas.
The underlying cryptocurrency blockchain technology is also expected to play a major role in food purchases. A 2019 study by research firm Gartner predicted that 20% of the world’s 10 largest grocery stores will use blockchain by 2025.