Paying for a coke with crypto may be closer than you think, after Amatil X, Coca-Cola Amatil’s (CCA) corporate venture arm, completed a minority investment in NZ company Centrapay, as part of the payment platform’s seed funding round.
This latest investment follows CCA's earlier commercial partnership with Centrapay, announced in June 2020. This early partnership allowed consumers to use Centrapay at over 2000 vending machines in Australia and NZ by scanning Centrapay’s QR code payment sticker to pay in various digital assets. Justifying the partnership to sceptical investors (looking at you Warren), CCA said that it hoped to learn how to distribute deals as digital assets at scale to consumers and drive them to our customers outlets.
Speaking on the investment, Centrapay CEO Jerome Faury said that:
The fact that Coca-Cola Amatil has invested in Centrapay through Amatil X, shows that there is a real appetite to provide customers with new ways to engage or to exchange value.
Faury also explained CCA's investment as an exercise in future proofing, suggesting that:
The global money supply is evolving rapidly with new economic models and the advent of smart, programmable money. The way we exchange value is set to change dramatically. There’s more change likely in the next 10 years than we’ve seen in the past 100.
With the fresh capital, consumers can no doubt look forward to using Centrapay's Sylo Wallet to pay for a coke or a sprite at a vending machine near them soon.