Travel Platform Travala Expands Payment Options With XEM

Travala, a service that lets its users pay for hotel stays with digital currency, has expanded its crypto payment options by adding support of NEM tokens.

The NEM Foundation and Travala.com announced the integration of XEM with the travel company's platform, according to a blog post published by Travala on Jan. 22.

XEM joined over 20 other digital currencies supported by Travala's platform, including Bitcoin, Ether, Tron, stablecoin Tether, privacy-focused token Monero and others.

The move comes in the wake of Travala's announcement that it began accepting USDT as a valid form of payment at its two million linked properties.

In November 2019, Travala entered a partnership with Booking.com, purportedly allowing users to book 90,000 different destinations using cryptocurrencies.

Following the partnership, Travala saw its revenue for the month of December go up by over 33.5% month-on-month.

Travala told Cointelegraph that the most used digital currency on the platform has been Bitcoin so far, and the proportion of customers who pay with cryptocurrencies has surpassed 60%.Challenges and benefits.

Travala also named refundable bookings with crypto payments as one of the challenges, due to volatility.

At the same time, Travala has ostensibly seen much higher-than-industry-average bookings made with digital currencies.

"It is refreshing to know that each time we take a booking with cryptocurrency payments we avoid all the normal issues with traditional payment methods such as fraudulent payments and bad actor disputes," Travala said.