Business

Bitcoin appeal for 2Talk

20:24 pm on 7 February 2014

A small telecommunications company has become one of the first in the country to accept payment with the virtual currency Bitcoin.

2Talk, which provides calls over the internet on about 50,000 lines, is mostly used by small businesses.

General manager Jude Flood although trading in Bitcoin was becoming increasingly popular, she was not expecting a lot of her customers to start paying their bills with the currency.

The company was a per-paid business so 90 percent of customers paid by credit card, and Ms Flood expected Bitcoin would appeal to a small percentage of them as they would not have to deal with such things as credit cards expiring or being stolen

"What tends to happen is, because we're prepaid, if they don't keep those details up to date then their transactions will fail and their services automatically get cut off," she said.

"This way, they're not constantly having to maintain credit card details."

As well, many of 2Talk's customers were early adopters, so Bitcoin was likely to appeal, Ms Flood said.

"The other thing is obviously it's very topical and we think that the currency has got legs and we want to be part of that," she said.

Listen to Jude Flood