Bitcoin - Dubai pizza joint currently only ones to back itThe only firm in the UAE accepting Bitcoin as a payment method is standing by the controversial currency - despite the recent furore over its use.
The Pizza Guys restaurant in Business Bay has taken 21 Bitcoin transactions since husband and wife owners Rami Badawi and Amber Haque begun accepting the peer-to-peer payment for pizzas on February 2. They insist the much-publicised controversy over the collapse of Tokyo-based Bitcoin exchange Mt Gox has not melted their enthusiasm for the crypto-currency.
Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso had scoffed: "No one recognises (Bitcoin) as a real currency.
"I expected such a thing to collapse." But Haque believes the Dubai pizzeria - which also still takes cash for their pizzas too - can make lots of dough from Bitcoin.
"We believe in it," she said. "When the internet came out people used that for nefarious means - that doesn't mean we obliterate the internet."
Downloading a Bitcoin wallet app on smartphones - now only available on Android devices - enables customers to pay for Haque's pizzas with the virtual currency. The customer buys Bitcoins with dirhams. The peer-to-peer connection - the two smartphones using the Bitcoin wallet - enables the transaction immediately.
The advantage being, Haque claims, that it eliminates the traditional "third party institution" such as a bank, making payment instantaneous and cheaper.
When customers pay by credit or debit card, Haque said: "It takes three or four days for payment to hit my account - and I have to pay a fee for a transaction."
But Haque said that rather than converting the Bitcoins into physical dirhams from the sale of The Pizza Guys goodies, the firm was "hoarding" them as an investment. When 7DAYS spoke to Haque, a Margherita pizza costing Dhs44 equated to 0.019 Bitcoins - though the currency fluctuates dramatically on a daily basis, she said.
Questioned as to why not a single other company in the UAE had adopted the Bitcoin way, she said the payment method was still taking off.
© 7Days 2014
