Reportedly, Norwegian Air Shuttle, aka as Norwegian, which offers cheap flights worldwide is reeling under financial stress. The Airline company has been unable to generate profits in the last couple of years.

The management, has hence, looked to diversify their business into cryptocurrencies. As reported earlier on Coingape, the Norweigian Founders are launching a cryptocurrency Exchange, Norwegian Block Exchange (NBX), which is due for launch next month.

Moreover, they have also started accepting cryptocurrencies as payments. The cryptocurrencies currently supported by the Airlines are Bitcoin, Ethereum and stablecoin, USD Circle.

To further increase adoption, they are now offering lucrative discounts and offers on cryptocurrency payments. The move is motivated to increase liquidity and cost efficiency above credit card payments. Currently, the banks and service providers charge a hefty fee of around 1.5%-2.5% and also “hold back a percentage of revenue to cover the risk of chargeback claims arising from insolvencies.”

Lasse Sandaker-Nielsen, Norwegian’s head of communications, told the media,

“Why should we wait for our revenues, and then have the credit card acquirers and the credit card companies make a lot of interest just sitting on that money,”

Moreover, the motivation of the management is also driven to increase the viability of their crypto-Exchange and Wallet. The company is looking to leverage its global presence in the airline industry to lure customers to their exchange.

They are offering ‘CashPoints’ to traders which can be used to book flight tickets. The ‘Trade and Fly’ promotion refunds 10% of trading fees on the exchange to customers’ as CashPoints. This is a very lucrative offer for regular traders and for the promotion of its Exchange.

Furthermore, they are backing it on the market itself, rather than releasing their own cryptocurrency. Hence, it seems a long shot for the conglomerate at the moment. Nevertheless, even 73-old Bjørn Kjos, the original Founder of Norweigian Airlines is confident about them, Sandaker-Nielsen reiterated Kjos’s views. He said,

“He [Kjos] believes that the banks and the credit card companies are the next Kodaks,”

Do you agree with the Veteran businessman’s views? Please share your views witb us.

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Norwegian Air Offers Discount on Crypto Payments as its Owners Chalk Bigger Plans

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Reportedly, Norwegian Air Shuttle, aka as Norwegian, which offers cheap flights worldwide is reeling under financial stress. The Airline company has been unable to generate profits in the last couple of years. 

Nivesh Rustgi

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