Latin American Travel Agency Despegar Begins Accepting Crypto Payments

Despegar (DESP), a leading online travel agency in Latin America, has started accepting crypto as a form of payment in Argentina in partnership with Binance Pay, both companies announced Monday.

Despegar is the first online travel agency in Latin America to accept crypto, the statement said, adding that payments will be made through Binance Pay. Inswitch, a cloud-based finance-as-a-service platform, will be responsible for converting crypto to fiat.

While this payment functionality is initially available only in Argentina, Despegar – which operates in 20 markets in Latin America – said it plans on rolling out the service to other countries in the future.

“We know that the world of cryptocurrencies is already a reality and, therefore, from this alliance, all Despegar customers in Argentina will be able to approach this universe in a friendly way,” Paula Cristi, general manager of Despegar for Argentina and Uruguay, said in a statement.

In September, a marketplace for tokenized travel products, TravelX, went live with the offering of inventory of the low-cost Argentine airline Flybondi. A month later, Latin American crypto exchange Lemon integrated with TravelX.