Swiss Retailers Now Offering Bitcoin Gift Cards in Stores

Major Switzerland store operators, Manor and Valora are set to start selling Bitcoin gift cards in their stores across the country.

New Bitcoin Gift Card Product Rolls Out

Reports have it that Manor, Switzerland’s largest department store chain, has already started selling Bitcoin voucher cards in 59 of its branches across the country. Valora on the other hand is set to start selling gift cards in April.

The bitcoin vouchers on sale in manor stores are called the Cryptonow vouchers created by crypto firm, Värdex Suisse. Värdex is the subsidiary of major Swiss crypto exchange Bitcoin Suisse.

Speaking on the new Cryptonow vouchers, the Head of Operations at Vardex, Simon Grylka stated that Cryptonow offers a simple onboarding channel for would-be cryptocurrency adopters daunted by the usual avenues for acquiring virtual currency. For Grylka, the Cryptonow voucher is akin to digital gold coins.

This new Värdex Bitcoin gift card product is coming amid continued growth in Switzerland’s crypto and blockchain industry.

Rising Use of Crypto Gift Cards

For customers who want to experience using their crypot as a medium of exchange, platforms like Bitrefill are of immense benefit. Founded in 2014, Bitrefill is currently the world’s largest crypto-only e-commerce site.

The platform offers services in 170 countries with over 1,650 businesses including Amazon, Walmart, Nike, Uber and Nintendo. They allow users to purchase mobile phone credit and gift cards without hassle. But, there is a new market growing outside of the US for gift cards. It’s a booming market in Africa.

The use of gift cards to purchase bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is popular in the peer-to-peer trading arena especially in jurisdictions with underdeveloped financial services infrastructure.

Platforms like Paxful, the popular global cryptocurrency platform founded in 2015 that allows users to trade with millions of people all over the world, have become a remittance hub for West Africans generally.

 Nigeria happens to be the company’s leading market in terms of volume and number of users. This comes as no surprise as Nigeria remains Africa’s largest crypto market and one of the world’s fastest-growing cryptocurrency markets.

The country’s Securities and Exchange Commission was reportedly working on a new form of regulation for wide scale crypto adoption last year before the country’s apex bank prohibited banks from transacting with crypto firms. The new law effectively made it difficult for Nigerians to buy crypto with their credit cards or receive withdrawals in fiat, leading to an increase in peer-to-peer transactions.