The world’s largest company by revenue, US retail giant Walmart, has launched a pilot program via Coinstar ATMs to allow customers to buy bitcoin at 200 of its stores across the United States, CoinDesk reports.
Walmart communications director Molly Blakeman confirmed that Coinstar, in partnership with Coinme, a crypto payment company that specializes in bitcoin ATMs also known as BTMs, has launched the program in Coinstar kiosks located inside Walmart stores that were previously used mainly for exchanging coins for paper bills or gift cards.
According to the Coinstar website, after inserting bills into the machine the customer is issued a paper voucher and must later set up a Coinme account and pass a KYC check before the voucher can be redeemed. The BTM charges the customers a 4% fee for the bitcoin option as well as another 7% cash exchange fee,
Walmart’s BTMs project has potential to expand across the retail giant’s 4,700 stores but the company deliberately skipped issuing a press release after the fake press release last month claiming Walmart stores will start accepting litecoin as payment.
Partly fueled by the Covid-19 pandemic that has entailed the world, the cryptocurrency ATM industry is expanding at a rapid pace. Coinstar’s bitcoin-buying services with Coinme was introduced in 2019 and included around 3,500 Coinme BTMs in the US in 2020 and added around 300 more BTMs in Florida in April.
Seth Sattler, compliance director of BTM provider DigitalMint, stressed that there are concerns about money laundering in connection with large-scale BTM rollouts since some BTM operators turn a blind eye to the relatively high level of illicit activity the machines attract, including money mules, human traffickers and assorted scammers.
Sattler pointed that DigitalMint, which accounts for only 5% of total BTM transaction volume, has rejected and returned $5 million to fraud victims over the past 18 months.
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