The discount portal Kupanda.ru announced the availability of bitcoin payments for discount certificates.

 Kupanda now enables Russian customers to pay in bitcoin for services such as cafes, restaurants, aqua parks, beauty salons, cinemas, fitness, hotels, health and education centres. The website targets young users. 

“Young customers like innovations, they like to experiment and the new service reflects this trend. Cryptocurrency goes well with the logistics of discount coupon sales – both are digital certificates. The difference is that a discount coupon is a service certificate whereas the cryptocurrency is a certificate for a financial active,” a spokesman at Kupanda stated. 

Kupanda offers discount coupons for services, while its twin start-up Costmart specialises in goods. Both companies were launched in July 2015 by a discount clothes merchant company Offprice. Coupons can be purchased with bank cards, payment terminals, mobile accounts, or “electronic money”. The terms and conditions on the Kupanda website define discount coupons as “electronic tickets” or “electronic documents”. 

CoinFox wrote recently about Overstock's plans to add “additional motivations” to encourage customers to use bitcoin, including bitcoin-only sales and exclusive discounts for purchases in bitcoin. The giant retail company that accepts bitcoin allegedly keeps 10% of its bitcoin income in digital currency, meaning that Overstock’s bitcoin income is close to $3.5 million.

Aliona Chapel