LOT Polish Airlines now accepts bitcoins as payment

Harriet Baskas | Special for USA TODAY

Star Alliance member LOT Polish Airlines has joined the small but growing group of airlines that list the software-based currency bitcoin alongside Visa, Mastercard, American Express, PayPal and other payment options for tickets on the airline’s website and mobile app.

“It‘s just the matter of time when payments with the online currency will become as popular as using credit cards today,” said Jiri Marek, LOT executive director for sales and distribution, in a statement, “We notice this potential, which is why we are one of the first airlines in the world to give its passengers the possibility of paying with bitcoins.”

Customers won’t be paying LOT directly with bitcoins. Ticket prices will first be calculated in a standard currency (i.e. euros, dollars or Polish zloty), then converted into bitcoins. A third-party payment service provider will handle the transactions, the airline said.

While not yet universal, several other airlines and online travel companies already accept bitcoin payments for flights.

In November 2013, Richard Branson announced that customers could pay now for a future Virgin Galactic space flight with bitcoins.

In July 2014, Latvian carrier airBaltic laid claim to being the world’s first airline to accept bitcoin payments for plane tickets.

“AirBaltic is keen to innovate. That is why we jumped on the bitcoin idea,” said airline spokesman Janis Vanags. “The noise and public reaction around the new service was much bigger than actual sales — we have collected less than 1,000 bookings in the past year since we started to accept bitcoin.”

Mexican regional carrier TAR Airlines announced in June that it would be the first Latin American airline to accept bitcoins.

Online travel agency CheapAir.com began accepting bitcoins for flight payments in November 2013 (and for most hotel reservations in February 2014) and reports close to $4 million in total bitcoin sales to date.

“Bitcoin is great [for merchants] because we avoid the egregious fees that the banks and card processors demand and we drastically reduce the risk of fraud and chargebacks,” said CheapAir CEO Jeff Klee. Customers can usually complete payment with just one click, he said, instead of having to type in credit card numbers and other information, “which is especially tedious when you’re trying to buy from your phone.”

Don’t be surprised if most airlines begin offering you the option to pay for your flight with bitcoins.

In February 2015, UATP, the payment network owned by the world’s airlines, teamed up with a payment processing partner (Bitnet) and now the more than 260 airlines in the UATP network can accept bitcoin payments — if they choose to go down that digital path.

Harriet Baskas is a Seattle-based airports and aviation writer and USA TODAY Travel's "At the Airport" columnist. She occasionally contributes to Ben Mutzabaugh's Today in the Sky blog. Follow her at twitter.com/hbaskas.