A new French restaurant in New York City is taking things one step further to give diners a unique experience: it’s letting them pay in bitcoin.
La Sirène, which opened on Friday, is located on Upper West Side, and proclaims to be an authentic French bistro. This is the second La Sirène restaurant in New York. The first is located downtown in Lower Manhattan.
According to the West Side Rag blog, though, while the restaurant accepts bitcoin, cash, cheque, and American Express, it doesn’t take Visa or Mastercard.
Reacting to the blog post, one person wrote:
They take bitcoin, but not Visa? Who are they hoping to market to? Makes no sense.
Another wrote:
Bitcoin but no “regular” credit cards (Visa, MasterCard)? Guess they only want to attract the Amex crowd (biz travelers, business people?) … and millennials with bitcoin. And who writes checks anymore?
As the crypto market continues to gain prominence restaurants are realizing the benefits of accepting the digital currency for payments.
Last August, a New Hampshire restaurant was reported as accepting the digital currency for everything on its menu. Called Street, and located in the west end of Portsmouth, it features a global menu while providing a casual atmosphere for hungry diners.
Shortly after that, Free Keene, a pro-decentralization and pro-bitcoin organization in New Hampshire, revealed that a food truck in Keene, New Hampshire, was accepting bitcoin. Featuring a bitcoin sign on the truck, Bon Vivant – Gourmet Street Food, is believed to be the first food truck in the U.S. to accept the digital currency.
However, it’s not just the food industry that is accepting the cryptocurrency.
In November, Italy’s biggest taxi firm, Cooperative RadioTaxi 3570, announced that it was accepting the digital currency as payment from its customers. In July, Japanese electronics retailer Bic Camera enabled the acceptance of bitcoin to customers across all its stores, becoming the first major Japanese retailer to do so. Whereas, tenants at a London residency can now pay their deposits in the cryptocurrency.
With the digital currency now worth over $5,000 it’s likely that more companies will begin accepting it as a form of payment.