Codapay, a payment gateway that operates in Southeast Asian countries like Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, recently announced its partnership with BitX. The partnership enables Codapay’s system and platform to support payment using a virtual currency called Bitcoin.
The company opts to walk this path due to the fact that the level of credit card penetration in Southeast Asia is still pretty low. Coda’s CEO Neil Davidson even confirmed about this.
“Considering that the level of credit card penetration in the region is still low, we think thatBitcoin has great potential to be one of most used online transaction methods,” Davidson claimed.
BitX was on the same page. In its official release, BitX stated that the potential to grow Bitcoin payment method in Southeast Asia is really vast.
“Southeast Asia has remarkable potential in payment sector; high percentage in e-commerce growth is paired with low percentage of credit card holders. This makes Bitcoin a very interesting payment method, particularly due to its zero risk concept that protects merchant from online fraud.”
He further explained that as one of most used virtual currency, Bitcoin facilitates local merchants who want to receive the payment without having to spend additional cost.
The integration between Codapay’s system and BitX’s Bitcoin Exchange’s infrastructure allows local merchants to receive the payment using Bitcoin, which later will be converted to local currency using BitX’s real-time price converter.
In Indonesia, Codapay has partnered with various parties in various sectors, such as telcos (Indosat and Telkomsel), Banks (ATM Bersama, BCA, Mandiri Mobile), Bolt, Alfamart, and many more. It’s worth to see whether the aforementioned partnership can promote Bitcoin as a payment method in Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia, or not. Although not being recognized by anyone, the use of Bitcoin in Indonesia keeps growing up.
