In a press release on 17 January 2019, Coinme, a Washington-based Bitcoin ATM (BTM) operator founded in 2014, announced that it will be partnering with Coinstar, a firm that owns and operates fully automated, multi-national network of self-service coin counting kiosks. The partnership will allow consumers to purchase Bitcoin (BTC) through Coinstar kiosks.

The process of buying the cryptocurrency using the kiosks are made simple for consumers who may be new to the crypto world. Neil Bergquist, co-founder and CEO of Coinme, commented that they are excited to provide consumers a convenient and simple mean to buy BTC, allowing them to take part in the “dynamic new economy” through kiosks located at local grocery stores.

To purchase BTC via Coinstar kiosks, consumers should first select “Buy Bitcoin” on a valid machine, read and accept the terms and conditions then enter their phone numbers. Next, insert the required amount of cash amounting up to $2,500 into the cash acceptor to obtain a voucher containing a BTC redemption code. Buyers should then visit and create a Coinme account or use an existing one to claim the purchased BTC.

The partnership is considered to be significant to the market as Coinstar owns and operates over 20,000 coin-counting kiosks in nine countries. The company listed a rough figure of “thousands” of kiosk machines which can integrate BTC transactions into them located in the U.S. Currently, according to CoinATMRadar, an industry monitoring resource, there are 4187 BTMs over the globe that allow BTC transactions, with 2516 of them located in the U.S.

While Coinstar have not announced any plans to implement the feature upon kiosks outside of the U.S., the addition of the “thousands” of Coinstar kiosks to the existing BTMs is already sufficient to boost the number of BTC transactions or even BTC investors. U.S. may even be the next country after Switzerland to actively integrate cryptocurrencies into their financial system and create a supportive stance for the sector.