Aussies buy fuel and chips with crypto across 175 fuel outlets

Commenting on the roll out, Crypto.com’s Asia & Pacific General Manager Karl Mohan tipped the adoption of an AUD-backed stablecoin as being the catalyst to make crypto payments mainstream in Australia.

Convenience store and petrol station brand On The Run (OTR) has launched crypto payment support across all 175 of its petrol stations and convenience stores across Victoria, South Australia (SA), and Western Australia (WA) as of Aug. 18.

As previously reported, the move is part of a collaboration between OTR, Singapore-based exchange Crypto.com, and DataMesh, a Sydney-based payment systems provider.

The exchange has provided its Pay Merchant service as a payment settlement layer, while Datamesh has provided the point of sale terminals.

Speaking with Cointelegraph, Crypto.com’s Asia & Pacific General Manager Karl Mohan noted that it only took “eight weeks to from the time of proof of concept to the point of actually getting a full scalable production-ready environment.”

Mohan noted that while 175 OTR stores have initially been outfitted with the infrastructure, the crypto payments service is operationally ready to scale much further.

“What happens now is any merchant, whether you're a cafe owner or someone who runs thousands of stores, could just plug and play,” he said.

Adding to the 175 stores, OTR’s parent company Peregrine Corp intends to roll out the crypto payments service to another 250 retail sites across the country such as Subway, Oporto, and Krispy Kreme.

Mohan also stated that Crypto.com charges zero fees on the transactions in this context, however, there will be fees on the merchant’s end, which will set their own rates. Such may suggest that transaction costs could be similar to that of card payments with fiat.

Questioned on what is needed to make crypto payments widely adopted in Australia, especially given the tax obligations of paying with crypto assets, Mohan opined that the utilization of an AUD-backed stable could be the key:

“So of course, Bitcoin and Ethereum because of their market capitalization are already on the top of the list. But an overwhelming number of consumers have said they are ready to accept and actually start paying with Australian stablecoins.”

“We've made the system available and if you've seen ANZ announce the Australian dollar stablecoin, and we see these types of stablecoins becoming available, I really believe that it will become mainstream,” he added.

So far the ANZ bank has pilot tested its A$DC stablecoin purely for private institutional purposes, but if it eventually does get opened up to the retail market, Mohan stated that “we would love the opportunity to work with any financial or any Australian deposit-taking institution that is keen to introduce a stablecoin.”

Afterpay

Afterpay spoke as part of the Senate inquiry into “Australia as a Technology and Financial Center” and Lee Hatton said there would be enough consumer demand to offer crypto services.

Australian buy now pay later (BNPL) giant Afterpay — now part of Jack Dorsey's Square — has said that it is likely to pursue cryptocurrency services once the regulatory framework is clear.

Following on from Afterpay’s submission to the Senate inquiry into “Australia as a Technology and Financial Center” which posited that merchants could slash payment costs by utilizing cryptocurrencies, representatives spoke to the inquiry on Sept. 8.

Afterpay’s vice president for public policy and communications Damian Kassabgi said that “this idea of being able to exchange currencies from person to person or to a merchant without going through the traditional rails could create a lot of efficiencies.”

Crypto-friendly Liberal senator Andrew Bragg asked if Afterpay had plans to offer crypto services in the future. Lee Hatton, the executive vice president at Afterpay responded that once the regulatory path was clear, the firm would be likely to meet the demand of crypto from its customers:

“Once we're able to understand the regulatory framework in this space, we can absolutely see where our customers are going. And it would seem to us that they are going to want to participate in this way.”

“We will absolutely see a part of our customers starting to leverage [Bitcoin] and we would absolutely be looking for a way to support them to do that,” she added.

The regulatory landscape of crypto in Australia remains unclear as the government is yet to put a detailed framework in place. Bragg urged the government back in May to “stay ahead of the game” by introducing regulations to protect consumers and foster innovation.

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The discussion moved on to stablecoins, with Kassabgi emphasizing the significance of using an Australian dollar (AUD) backed stablecoin for payments between consumers and merchants.

“It is not hard to imagine a world where a privately issued stablecoin that is pegged to the Australian dollar, one that passes from consumer-to-consumer or consumer-to-merchant with very little friction where the traditional payment rails are not used, where interchange fees are close to non-existent, and where there is no commercial bank as an intermediary,” he said.

“There are many benefits to this future outlook. However, there is work to be done to create a safe and efficient regulatory environment,” he added.

Australian stablecoin