Burger King, which belongs to Restaurant Brands International Inc (NYSE:QSR), is introducing its own take on Bitcoin in Russia and its name is “WhopperCoin.”
The WhopperCoin will be available to customers in Russia that sign up for a new rewards program. This program will give customers one of the digital coins for each ruble that they spend at the restaurant.
Customers that collect enough of the WhopperCoins can trade them in for food. Burger King will require 1,700 coins of the virtual currency to be traded in for a Whopper. The company will be creating a total of 1 billion of the digital coins to reward customers with.
Burger King says that it is also planning to introduce a new mobile app that will allow customers to track their Whoppercoins. The app is ready yet, but should be out in the near future. It will be available for devices running Apple Inc’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) iOS and Alphabet Inc’s (NASDAQ:GOOG,GOOGL) Google Android operating systems, reports Coindesk.
“We are pleased that Burger King Russia has chosen Waves as a platform for launching its loyalty program and the emission of WhopperCoin,” Maxim Pertsovsky, Business Development Director of Waves Platform, said in a statement. “We are confident that this decision will promote the popularization of blockade technology in Russia, and will also bring its benefits and opportunities to a wide audience.”
While WhopperCoin is the first, it likely won’t be the last cryptocurrency made by a company. Dr Garrick Hileman, of the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, says that he expects other companies to create their own virtual currencies for use in rewards programs.
As of this writing, William White did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.
