Italy's largest taxi company continues to innovate and has announced that it will accept Bitcoin payments

Cooperativa RadioTaxi 3570, a large Italian taxi company, has announced that it will accept Bitcoin payments. It is reported that the company has more than 3,700 taxis in Rome and can provide more than 10 million services each year.

RadioTaxi 3570

RadioTaxi 3570 was founded in November 1968 with more than 100 founding members. It is said that the company's taxi prices are the lowest in Europe. They receive about 30,000 taxi calls every day, of which 7,000 are from foreign tourists.

RadioTaxi 3570 is ISO 9001 certified, the first taxi company in Italy to receive this quality certification.

Accept Bitcoin Payments

RadioTaxi 3570's official website states that Bitcoin, credit cards, debit cards and PayPal are all payment methods currently supported by the company.

RadioTaxi 3570 is able to accept Bitcoin thanks to the efforts of Bitcoin startup Chainside , which in September partnered with the Italian Taxi Union (URI) and its founder Loreno Bittarelli, who is also the president of RadioTaxi 3570, to provide wallet, invoicing and monitoring services.

Chainside platform is integrated with URI's ride-hailing app IT Taxi . Users can use IT Taxi to check the price and route information of ride-hailing. Customers who pay with Bitcoin will jump directly to the Chainside platform when paying. Once the payment is completed, the confirmation information will be sent to IT Taxi. It is reported that IT Taxi's services cover more than 50 cities across the country.

Taxi Industry Hackathon

This collaboration with Chainside is not the first time URI and RadioTaxi 3570 have explored Bitcoin payments. Last June, URI hosted a hackathon in Rome, which was also the first competition for innovation in the taxi industry.

The winner at the time was BitTaxi, an app that allows users to pay for taxi fares with Bitcoin. Bittarelli said after the game:

Of course, it is difficult to get everyone to accept Bitcoin payments. Our goal in hosting this competition is to show that our industry is not as conservative as the outside world thinks, and we are not against innovation. We see innovation as an effective incentive for development. It is necessary to let competitors know our ideas.

Once BitTaxi and IT Taxi’s payment models are integrated, URI and RadioTaxi 3570 will be able to accept Bitcoin payments in a variety of ways.