Crypto Vending Machines are becoming a reality! Three vending machines selling Shiner Bock and Austin Amber beers were showcased at SXSW on Wednesday. The special thing about these vending machines? They will accept payment with crypto. The units are currently on pre-order.
“We’re merging identity and payment into one transaction,” Civic’s Titus Capilnean said.
The machine has since sold about 150 beers each day since Sunday, when it opened for business. About $7,600 in sales has been done, or around 100,000 CVC.
Tokens from the vending machine were airdropped to SXSW attendees by the company itself. The beers were 200 CVC each, or about 12 bucks each. iPhone users who downloaded the Civic Pay app and verified their identity received enough CVC to buy a round. To finish their transaction, a QR code was generated that they would scan using the app – payment would be finished via this method.
“Basically, we built these and tested them here,” Capilnean said of the SXSW demo. It was the first time CVC ran sales and identity verification at the same time with the general public.
While the transactions through the app are settled in crypto, the idea behind the app is to make sure that users can interact with it just as easily as they could with an app or transaction process that used fiat. Civic first demoed its ability to verify ages at Consensus 2018 when they worked with Anheuser-Busch. 2019 is the year that Civic has upped the functionality by enabling sales via a mobile app.
Technical issues weren’t the only issue that Civic had to deal with when preparing for these vending machines.
“We got the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission to be on board with this happening,” said Capilnean. Once state regulators were convinced, SXSW organizers felt more comfortable with the product as well. The priority of all involved was to ensure that people purchasing from the vending machine were of legal age to purchase the alcohol and consume it. For the Beverage Commission, it didn’t matter if humans or machines did the verification.
This is a huge industry and a huge market that Civic might have found itself involved in. Age verification for companies is an immense industry, alcohol certainly being one of the areas where automation and cryptocurrency could vastly speed up and secure the process to reduce incorrect verification. This would also take pressure off servers, sporting events, and bars. Music festivals are the most immediate opportunities, according to Capilnean.
What do you think? Do you hold any CVC? Have you been involved with their verification process? Let us know what you think on our Facebook page!
