Airbnb (ABNB) is working on bringing crypto payments to its platform.

Airbnb’s CEO Brian Chesky revealed that the online lodging marketplace is implementing crypto payments. That is together with other improvements to the site.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Chesky rounded up the top suggestions for new features for Airbnb’s service in a recent Twitter post. On Monday, Chesky asked its users what Airbnb should launch for 2022. He received 4000 submissions from users.

Out of these, implementing crypto payments was the top suggestion

Chesky says he is open to a variety of crypto token ideas. This means Airbnb will not be limiting payments to just Bitcoin.

Airbnb has had a payment volume of $336 billion since 2013. Currently, the service accepts Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, Apple Pay, and Google Play.

Airbnb and Crypto

The latest Tweet is not the first point where Airbnb met crypto. The relationship goes back to the company’s IPO. Airbnb said that its future would depend on adapting to the evolving standards and tech in its initial public offering. Specifically, the document mentions tokenization, crypto, and blockchain tech.

Our future success will also depend on our ability to adapt to emerging technologies such as tokenization, cryptocurrencies, new authentication technologies, such as biometrics, distributed ledger and blockchain technologies, artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality, and cloud technologies.

As a result, we intend to continue to spend significant resources maintaining, developing, and enhancing our technologies and platform

Recently, Chesky also mentioned crypto back in September. In a news appearance, he responded to a question on crypto payments.

In his reply, Chesky remarked the company got a lot of requests over the years for crypto but cannot announce anything official for the time.

Moreover, he also mentioned another link of his company to crypto. The billionaire CEO of Coinbase, Brian Armstrong, was a former Airbnb employee.

Fun fact, the CEO of Coinbase used to work for Airbnb so we are really proud of their success.

Armstrong held the position of technical product manager at Airbnb.

Crypto Competition

As other significant players are jumping into crypto, it’s no wonder Airbnb did. However, the company also has some competition. That includes firms that are much deeper into crypto.

For example, Travala.com just said to use Shibtoken (SHIB-X) as a payment method. Back in May, the company started accepting DOGE coin (DOGE-X).

Besides that, Travala also launched Dtravel back in July. Dtravel is a decentralized home-sharing marketplace using blockchain.

The company also has its token, Dtravel (TRVL-X). The token also lets users vote on the critical decisions for the platform.