Tokyo — BITPoint Japan, the company behind Peach Aviation’s move to let travellers use bitcoin to pay for tickets, is planning to give hundreds of thousands of Japanese retail outlets the ability to accept the digital currency. "We’re holding discussions with a retail-related company," BITPoint president Genki Oda said in a recent interview. "By going through a company providing payment terminal services to shops, we have the possibility of increasing its use at one stroke. It’s easier than talking to lots of individual retailers." BITPoint is joining a flurry of companies embracing regulations, enacted in Japan in April, that recognise digital currencies as a form of payment. That had helped to make yen trades one of the world’s largest transaction pools, exceeding China’s pole position at the end of 2016, said Oda. Bic Camera, one of the country’s biggest electronics retailers, began accepting bitcoin at two stores in Tokyo in April. "We’re also talking to a big convenience store ...
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