The World’s first Airline to accept Bitcoins misses a big opportunity.

airBaltic, Latvia’s national airline confirmed this morning that it is now accepting Bitcoins, and in doing so becoming the first airline that accepts Bitcoins directly rather than through a third party.

This is a a positive move for those that want Bitcoin to evolve into a mainstream currency that can be used for the purchase of everyday goods and utilities, and it could lead to competitors also offering a Bitcoin payment option. The immediate knock-on effect could be that Expedia will start accepting Bitcoin for flight bookings, in addition to hotel bookings that you can already make with the crypto-currency.

By becoming the first airline to accept Bitcoin, airBaltic have surely stolen a march on everybody else.

However, they have missed a trick. The dreaded transaction fee.

Yes, even when booking a flight with Bitcoin the transaction fee is €5.99.

airBaltic commented:

“the transaction fee is to cover the costs associated with processing and handling the booking rather than the Bitcoin itself”

Yet, a processing and handling fee typically refers to processing the payment part of the booking, so where in this case there is practically none, it is not clear why this expense still applies, as surely the handling of the booking itself would already be accounted for in its salaries and expenses, as after all as that is the main purpose and reason for the businesses existence, it would seem pretty odd not to have this factored in to their costs already.

There is no transaction fee when using an airBaltic card for example, which demonstrates that the main purpose of these fees are deterrents, to encourage customers to avoid other payment methods and to take advantage of the benefits of being an airBaltic card holder.

Having broken ground in becoming the first airline to accept Bitcoin, it would make no sense to essentially deter people from using it, otherwise it serves as no more than a publicity stunt, which to be fair to them has done them pretty well so far already with the Bitcoin community buzzing about this.

airBaltic were quick to spot a big opportunity by allowing Bitcoin, I just hope they don’t let an even bigger one pass them by.

• Interestingly, although airBaltic is an independently operated company, it is actually state owned, meaning that in an indirect way, the Latvian Government is accepting and recognising Bitcoin as an acceptable form of payment.