Argentine Low-Cost Airline Claims to Be World’s First to Offer Tickets in Crypto

Buenos Aires — Argentine low-cost airline Flybondi announced Wednesday that its customers will be able to buy tokenized tickets through Binance Pay, using the USDC stablecoin to complete the transaction, and claims to be the first carrier in the world to offer tokenized air tickets, or ‘NFTickets’, and which passengers will be able to transfer, resell at a fixed price, or sell at auction.

The Argentine low-cost airline will launch the feature through a strategic alliance with TravelX, a blockchain technology company that developed the solution.

How does it work? In order to buy tickets through Travel.xyz, it is necessary to fund a wallet of the platform with USDC (stablecoin pegged to the dollar).

An NFTicket is the ‘tokenization’ of an airline ticket via blockchain technology, which also allows a passenger’s name to be reassigned once purchased, and makes it possible for the ticket to be transferred or resold to another person up to three days before the departure date.

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However, what will happen when Binance removes USDC from its platform?

On September 5, Binance announced that it will convert its users’ deposits in USDC, USDP and TUSD to its own stablecoin, BUSD. Asked by Bloomberg Línea about this issue. TravelX said “the platform’s architecture and technology base was conceived to support multi- and cross-chain and multicurrency”. In other words, the solution will soon support other stablecoins, which can be used to buy Flybondi tickets.

According to TravelX, the alliance inaugurates an era in which “the travel industry and the new Web 3.0 world converge to provide a much more flexible experience for travelers, generating at the same time new sources of income and a strong reduction of transactional costs for airlines”.

“We are very happy to use blockchain technology to give the greatest freedom to our customers,” Flybondi CEO Mauricio Sana said regarding the alliance with TravelX, while the latter company’s CEO and co-founder Juan Pablo Lafosse said: “very soon we will see many other airlines follow suit”.

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What a fintech and crypto expert says

“With tokenization and the NFT revolution, the opportunities are unimaginable: any digital asset can a priori be decentralized and traded more easily,” Ignacio Carballo, head of crypto and alternative finance at Americas Market Intelligence, said following Flybondi’s announcement.

“FlyBondi and TravelX’s announcement is a disruptive step in what is already the main area in terms of volume within e-commerce in the hotel and tourism industry worldwide,” he added.

“The most disruptive contribution will be the possibility that the ticket can be transferred or resold to another person. This will contribute to a new secondary market that will undoubtedly boost the [airline] industry.”

–– Francisco Aldaya contributed to this report

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