Crypto payments are taking off in a big way in Lugano, Switzerland with 60 merchants and counting.
Over the weekend, thousands of Bitcoiners and crypto enthusiasts descended on the small, sleepy Swiss town of Lugano. More specifically, they piled onto a McDonald’s restaurant.
Perched on Lake Lugano, McDonald’s Lugano received countless visits from Bitcoiners keen to trade satoshis (the smallest denomination of Bitcoin) for Big Macs, McFlurrys, and coffee.
The entire McDonald’s team was educated and onboarded onto the Bitcoin network just days before the major European Bitcoin and blockchain conference, the Plan B Forum, Tether chief technology officer Paolo Ardoino told Cointelegraph.
The team at Plan B intends to hit 1,000 merchants accepting crypto by Q2 2022. The team will onboard more and more merchants to ensure that Lugano becomes the best place to spend crypto in Europe.
Unlike El Salvador’s top-down approach to Bitcoin, in which the president announced Bitcoin as legal tender and where there was reportedly little hands-on educational assistance for people on the ground, Plan B has the luxury of a team of onboarding personnel.
Indeed, Tether and Plan B have the resources to guide merchants through the crypto onboarding process. Plus, they are able to receive feedback from merchants and update their systems accordingly.
True to form, on the first day of the plan B conference, the onsite pizzeria chaffed by Mauro had issues with the payment terminal. The Plan B team soon rectified the situation. At Cointelegraph’s hotel, upon arrival, the receptionist said they would accept crypto payments starting the following day. Cointelegraph endured paying in fiat for an entire day before, as promised, the hotel’s point-of-sale solution was put to use.
ll Plan B merchants accept payments over the colorful payment terminal in the LVGA token, Bitcoin Lightning, and Tether. Cointelegraph succeeded in living off crypto during its stay in the Swiss city, barring one exception: Not a single pharmacy accepts crypto (yet). So, if you are planning on a visit to Lugano, don’t forget your toothbrush.
