Sorgenia opens to payment in Bitcoin within its store. Today it is possible to pay purchases of devices for the smart home; in the future also bills
For the first time in Italy an energy company opens to payment in cryptocurrencies, to be precise in Bitcoin. This is Sorgenia, which is collaborating with Italian startup Chainside to test the new payment method.
Sorgenia customers who have a wallet in Botcoin can now select this payment method on the company's marketplace, both via app and via Web, in a way that is absolutely similar to when they pay with a credit card. There will be no commission on the transaction and the Euro/Bitcoin exchange will be done at the countervalue of the virtual currency at the time of the transaction. According to experts, today, in Italy, there is an amount of Bitcoin equivalent to a countervalue of 3.5 billion dollars, which rises to 5 billion if we add all the other cryptocurrencies in circulation. To date, however, the large companies that accept Bitcoin in Italy as a method of payment are very few.
Sorgenia: what you can pay in Bitcoin
At the moment you can't pay your electricity bill with the virtual currency, but you can buy from the Sorgenia store two categories of products: smart home devices (smart meters, wireless smart thermostats, detectors) and light electric vehicles (hoverboards, scooters and electric skateboards). The possibility of paying bills in virtual currency, however, is already being studied as Sorgenia's Chief Innovation Officer, Alberto Bigi, explains: "We don't want to stop here: we are studying how to extend the use of Bitcoins to other services, first and foremost the payment of bills."
Expert Supervision
This experiment by Sorgenia with cryptocurrencies was made possible by the advice of an expert in the field: Luigi Gabriele, a member of the Ministry of Economic Development's Working Group on blockchain. According to Gabriele, "At a time when people are thinking about facilitating payments digitally to counter the use of cash, it is necessary to open up to cryptomontage." Chainside, Sorgenia's partner in this experiment, is a Bitcoin payment platform that manages all stages of the transaction with the blockchain. It already has specific solutions to make e-commerce and physical store POS compatible with cryptocurrency payments.