Pizza Hut Venezuela now accepts bitcoin and other cryptocurrency as payment for food, according to an announcement tweeted by digital assets firm CryptoBuyer.
CryptoBuyer said it has been named Pizza Hut’s payments partner in Venezuela. Customers can order pies and other food with bitcoin, dash and CryptoBuyer’s own token, XPT.
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Richard Elkhouri, CEO of Pizza Hut Venezuela, confirmed the partnership in an interview with El Axioma.
“Today Pizza Hut is trying to go hand in hand with technological innovation, with the support of what technology offers every day, to be able to … evolve in the market,” Elkhouri told the publication.
He said the chain has been building partnerships with large companies like Coca-Cola as well as third-party delivery platforms, per suggestions from its customers. This includes an alliance with Cryptobuyer “in the incorporation of platforms and its technological advice for consumer management towards in-store consumption.”
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“Today, the use of technology has become so vital for people who have devices in their daily lives,” Elkhouri told El Axioma. “It is important that we accompany them, young people, contemporary adults or people with a knowledge of technology … Pizza Hut today cannot be detached from these technological advances and all those incorporations of new systems of approaches or daily life that people execute … That is like staying in the past and not continuing to evolve.”
CoinDesk, a website focused on cryptocurrency, reported that CryptoBuyer is based in Panama and has been operating in Latin America since 2015 as a point-of-sale and cryptocurrency ATM service provider.
“With Venezuela suffering from crippling hyperinflation due to U.S. sanctions and poor economic management, the nation is seen as having potential for rising adoption of cryptocurrency as an alternative method of payment and store of value,” CoinDesk reports.
