1 CommentSwitzerland’s biggest university, located in Zurich, is setting the example when it comes to open-minded education institutions by testing a new Bitcoin payment solution in one of its cafeterias.
The trial will happen during the next two weeks. Throughout this period, the students at the University of Zurich will be able to use the innovative service CoinBlesk, a mobile payments platform based on two-way near-field communication (NFC) technology that was created by nine local students and teachers.
CoinBlesk’s website describes the software as “a student project from the University of Zurich”.
The goal of this project is to implement an open source solution where Bitcoin payments will be possible through a mobile device. The app called CoinBlesk includes a Bitcoin payment server where the seller and the buyer will be able to handle Bitcoin payments. For the communication between the buyer and the seller NFC equipped devices will be used.
According to Coindesk, the crypto-tool was developed within a project that intended to create an open-source Bitcoin spending tool. Now, the service will allow its temporary users to load their CoinBlesk wallets using the internet or a new Bitcoin ATM that will be installed at the campus in the meantime.
The Bitcoin ATM – which was produced by BitAccess – “makes the trial phase easier for people willing to pay with NFC-based Bitcoin transactions, since they can buy them locally”, said one of the university’s professors, Dr Burkhard Stiller. He worked as one of the project’s advisors during the development of CoinBlesk.
The machine will be managed by the Geneva-based Bitcoin broker SBEX and can be found near Mensa UZH Binzmühle, the university’s dining facility that will accept Bitcoin payments during the trial.
Images source: Wikimedia
I hope they will soon invest time in the financial analysis of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.