Totalplay added Bitcoin as a form of payment for your cable, telephony and internet packages. Salinas Group signed an agreement with IBEX Mercado, a Bitcoin Lightning payment service provider, which will benefit more than four million Mexicans. The deployment confirms the commitment of the Mexican conglomerate to the cryptocurrency, after activating this means of payment in Elektra stores at the end of 2021.
Ricardo Salinas Pliego, director of Grupo Salinas, confirmed the new option in Totalplay on his Twitter account. The Mexican businessman is a promoter of Bitcoin, which he considers “a thing well done” that is “safer and more profitable than money.”
Payment with Bitcoin is now available within My Totalplay in section Payment Methods. When accessing from the web, a pop-up window will appear inviting users to pay the balance using the Lightning or On-chain network.
The user must select a wallet and later, the system will generate a QR code that includes the conversion of pesos to BTC corresponding to the package you have contracted. Unlike a credit card, the payment with Bitcoin could take up to 40 minutes to be reflected in the system.
The Bitcoin in Totalplay is the first step of a larger strategy
José Lemus, executive director of IBEX, revealed that they will implement a new technology in Grupo Salinas that will allow Mexicans to pay with Bitcoin and receive remittances. According to the executive, the association will open the door to any Bitcoin company or fintech who wants to take advantage of Lightning technology. The agreement would also help boost the adoption of this cryptocurrency in Mexico.
“The true value of this technology is not about paying for a cup of coffee in a different way,” Lemus said. “In a world where we’re going to have more and more digitization of our products and services, we need better payment technology…we didn’t have good enough payment technology, but now we do, with Lightning,” he said. .
The Lightning Network (LN) is a network of payment channels that enables faster transactions, thus solving the problem of micropayments. Its main characteristic is that the movements are off-chain; that is, they are not established in the Bitcoin blockchain and must not be validated by the miners. In this way, congestion in the main network is avoided and transactions are processed cheaply and instantly.