You can now buy used cars in India through Bitcoin

The cryptocurrency Bitcoin was mentioned during the annual budget speed by Arun Jaitley, Finance Minister but they were not declared illegal in India. A Mumbai-based startup Truebil, which runs a used car marketplace has now started accepting bitcoins as payments for used cars. The start-up claims that it is a perfectly legal way of payment in India.

The start-up is not accepting the payments directly. Instead, Unocoin, a website that lets you trade cryptocurrencies is a partner of the start-up. Customer will have to pay Unocoin through bitcoin and they will deposit the similar amount in the start-up’s bank account, which will complete the transaction. Truebil will not display the car prices in crypto-asset form or accept any online payment.

Truebil will use Unocoin’s point-of-sale applications in its stores to accept bitcoin payments. This will be done at their dealerships. Customers cannot pay the start-up directly or transfer the crypto-asset in Truebil’s account.

After the customer chooses a vehicle, Unocoin gives a barcode to Truebil. This barcode displays the price of a particular car in bitcoin value. The value stays locked for 30 minutes period and if the customer chooses to make the payment within in the lock-in period, the price will not change. If the payment exceeds the 30 minute lock-in period, the price will be updated with latest bitcoin price.

Shubh Bansal, co-founder, Truebil said to TechCircle,

Unocoin will not charge the customers or the start-up for the payment process. Both the parties will get the transaction and conversion services for free. However, a law firm has said that such transaction will be on the government radar. RBI has also issued a series of regulation indicating security-related risks related to the dealing of cryptocurrencies.

This is the first time a car dealership is offering such a dealing using bitcoin in India. There are a few restaurants in India which announced the acceptance of Bitcoins as payments. The crypto-currency is slowly getting accepted worldwide. As per Unocoin, this new arrangement will open new avenues for crypto-currencies in India. In the future, we may see more people doing transactions using the cryptocurrencies.

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