CheapAir.com

By Jeff Klee, CEO

Dear Travelers,

A couple of months ago, I wrote to you about some challenges we were facing finding a replacement for our processor Coinbase, who had informed us they would be shutting down their merchant platform. Since 2013, we had relied on Coinbase to facilitate our acceptance of Bitcoin, and we were in unfamiliar territory to be suddenly scrambling for an alternative.

I cannot tell you how grateful I am for the overwhelming amount of thoughtful feedback we received. We went into the process thinking we were on a desperate quest to find a new processor. But thanks to many of you, we came out of it realizing we don’t need a processor at all.

For about a month now, we have been testing an open source Bitcoin payment processor, BTCPayServer, which, admittedly, I had never heard of before several of you suggested I take a look at it. Although there was a slight learning curve at first, and some engineering work to create the flow to turn crypto from you into dollars for airlines and hotels, we are thrilled with the end result. Not only does BTCPayServer enable us to circumvent BitPay’s controversial BIP-70 wallet requirement, but, after the Coinbase situation, we find it really liberating to no longer be dependent on a third party. We now have much more control of the process, which has made possible faster, more efficient order processing. We can also do a much better job of gracefully handling the occasional anomalies that are still inherent in crypto commerce. Many, many thanks to Nicolas Dorier, Predrag T, and the other BTCPayServer contributors; you’ve built a truly great product.

We know we’re not the only retailer affected by the Coinbase action that had to find new solutions or make a difficult decision. We believe that accepting digital currency has been a win-win for both CheapAir and our customers. So we decided to double down without reservation.

Besides moving to BTCPayServer, we have also set up a dedicated support team just for crypto customers, so if you need help you can reach someone who is familiar with and understands how crypto works:

Escalated, dedicated email support:
[email protected]

Priority crypto phone number:
1-800-619-6999

We have also begun accepting Bitcoin Cash, Dash, and Litecoin. (We use GoCoin for that and they’ve been great).

Thanks again for your continued support of CheapAir.com. As always, we welcome your feedback. We’ll continue to do everything we can to make it easy to book travel with digital currency. Please continue to let us know how we’re doing!