Australia is offering Bitcoin expansion of cryptocurrency boundaries. With new mining firms, trading in cryptocurrency is on the up and, as of now, Australians have the freedom to pay their bills using cryptocurrency.
The deal has come about after a partnership was formed between two financial technology firms, Gobill, an automated billing platform, and Cointree, to allow the payment of bills using cryptocurrencies. The agreement states that Gobill will handle the functions of an intermediary under the deal. In other words, it will take users’ funds and pay bills on their behalf.
Users on the two platforms will pay their bills using their digital assets stored in Cointree’s wallet. At the moment, Cointree supports more than 40 cryptocurrencies incuding Ethereum, Bitcoin, XRP, NEO, and Litecoin.
According to Sheldon Ewans, Gobbill co-founder, he was late to the cryptocurrency party. He began to dabble in it early last year and was optimistic that it’s what made this collaboration a success.
In a statement Sheldon said:
“I have been trading but I haven’t been successful. That was Cointree’s appeal. I’m a newbie and I’m surrounded by people at (fintech co-working space) Stone and Chalk. They are all crypto pundits.”
Small enterprises and households
Users on the Gobill platform will have the capacity to link their cryptocurrency wallets and pay their bills using a specified cryptocurrency. This service has targeted households and small business owners and will meet existing and anticipated demand, according to Shendon Ewans, Gobbill CEO and co-founder.
“In the coming years, we expect the number of customers who would like to pay their bills using cryptocurrency to increase,” said the CEO in a statement.
“Our union will oblige to this market and ensure Gobbill continues to remain ahead of the curve when it comes to allowing users to pay bills automatically. At the same time, they will do this knowing they are protected from scams and any form of fraud.”
Robust cryptocurrency usage
Cointree began its operation five years ago. Since then, it boasts approximately 100 million transactions. Before the partnership, the platform allowed customers to settle their bills using cryptocurrencies and there is optimism that, with the collaboration, the user base will surge. The performance has been encouraging for the startup on Cointree’s bill-payment service for the two years it has been running.
Jess Rendon, the operations manager of Cointree, told The Australian Financial Review in an interview that last year they had about AU$100 million of bills paid. With this payment feature, the figure has grown ten times.
In recent years, Australia has experienced remarkable growth in paying bills using cryptocurrency. In May last year, a publication reported that Bitcoin bill payment in the world scaled up by 3300% in three years. During that time, school fees took the lion’s share of crypto bill payment, followed by loans, then supernatural expenses. Rent, credit card repayment, and taxes also featured in the top ten.
Paying with crypto
The partnership will open avenues even to those who have no experience in using cryptocurrency. The intention of the business is to go global, so it has rebranded and re-launched its exchange, facilitating token-to-token trading as the first step in international markets. This, however, is not regulated the same way as token-to-cash trades.
Even so, Cointree hopes to get approval from international regulators to offer its full service. Early this year, the price of Bitcoin dropped from highs of $25,000 in December to under $9000 in early February.
Rates have continued to fluctuate since then but it has remained low compared to last year’s highs. As of this publication, one Bitcoin is fetching around $6,912. According to Ms. Renden, Cointree operations manager, this is not discouraging investors despite the price decline.
She said:
“The market keeps going up and down. We all need magic that could inform us when it shoots up and down, but different customers have different investment plans.”
