Luxury Car Firm From California Explores Blockchain And BTC Payments

Meet Karma Automotive – a luxury car manufacturer based in California which recently announced its intentions to explore blockchain technology along with its shareholders. With this, the luxury car firm wants to accept Bitcoin but also explore the technology behind cryptocurrencies in detail.

Even though there have been a lot of so-called Bitcoin acceptance stories in our cryptocurrency news so far, this one is meant to have a big difference. Karma Automotive is a manufacturer that wants to adopt blockchain – but also take payments in Bitcoin directly (as opposed to using a third-party company for processing them).

As a post on AutoFutures showed, Karma Automotive will be using its flagship Newport Beach, California showroom to help and demonstrate the power of blockchain technology for payments and more. The firm will be accepting Bitcoin for new services completed and vehicles purchased at its company-owned store.

According to Dr. Lance Zhou who is the CEO of the luxury car firm:

“We are opening our platform to serve as a test bed to help convert theoretical blockchain applications to practical use.”

Zhou also added that the company will soon partner with the Wanxiang Group, which is Karma’s primary shareholder – in an attempt to work on blockchain solutions and their application. The first step towards familiarisation with the technology is for the company to accept Bitcoin.

Zhou’s insistence on the move is an effort that will potentially help shareholders to understand Bitcoin and the technology behind it. As it stands, this is a rare case of genuine Bitcoin acceptance.

For the luxury car manufacturer, making Bitcoin payments possible is now the job of payment processing companies. These services basically act as a middleman to the transaction and simply perform an exchange – giving the customer’s preferred currency for the one of the retailer.

The good news is that a lot of people may be attracted to the luxury car firm and its services. As soon as the Karma announcement went live, there has not been a mention of working with a payment processing service. All of this hints on the possibility of the luxury car firm accepting Bitcoin directly at its store. If doing so, it will be doing a great service for the industry as a whole.