McDonald’s Starts Accepting Bitcoin and Tether in Lugano, Switzerland

cryptonews.com:

Plan ₿ Foundation, a joint initiative between the Swiss City of Lugano and USDT stablecoin issuer Tether, announced a collaboration with payment facilitator GoCrypto to officially bring bitcoin (BTC), tether (USDT), and LVGA payments to Lugano – enabling citizens to use their wallets at McDonalds and other merchants.

Per a press release shared with Cryptonews.com, as of Tuesday,

“GoCrypto payments will be available at nearly a dozen merchants throughout the city, including McDonalds, art galleries, and more.”

Users can utilize their wallets at these places to pay with Bitcoin Lightning Network, USDT, and local payment token luga (LVGA), while the city will work to bring in more businesses over the next 25 days, said the announcement.

By end 2023, the Plan ₿ Foundation aims to enable more than 2,500 merchants to accept these three currencies.

In the meantime, they expect to service over 2,000 customers at the upcoming Plan ₿ Forum, a bitcoin conference that will be held on October 28-29 in Lugano.

A short video was shared on Twitter, showing a person ordering food on McDonald’s digital kiosk and paying for the order in BTC at the register with a mobile app.

Paolo Ardoino, Tether’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO), was quoted in the latest announcement as saying that Lugano and Tether signed a memorandum of understanding earlier this year to launch “a strategic collaboration through several initiatives.” This includes helping local businesses to integrate their existing payment services with “the permitted stablecoins and Bitcoin.”

Ardoino stated that,

“We have been working together to ensure the technological infrastructure is in place to support this and today we watch all of that hard work come to fruition.”

Back in March, as