From now on, customers of Parisian tobacco shops will be able to buy not only cigarettes, cigars, lottery tickets and other items, but also the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. As the Reuters agency reports, for now, with the support of the fintech company Keplerk, bitcoins will be available in six tobacco stores in Paris. One of the company's founders, Adil Zakhar, expects that by February the number of tobacco shops selling bitcoins will grow to six and a half thousand. It is not entirely clear what Zakhar bases such bold expectations on; he explains the demand for bitcoins in tobacco establishments this way: «Many people find it hard to buy bitcoins online, and people trust the local owners of such little shops more than anonymous websites».
At the end of November last year, Keplerk concluded a deal with a supplier of cash register software to promote a scheme under which tobacco retailers in France will offer customers bitcoin vouchers in denominations of 50, 100 and 250 euros ($57, $114 and $285 respectively). The company intended to allow customers to convert the vouchers into bitcoins and store them in wallets on its platform. However, as early as November 26 the French Financial Markets Authority (AMF) criticized Keplerk for its plans to sell cryptocurrencies through tobacco shops. The AMF stated that Keplerk would hardly be able to «provide customers with sufficient protection» and «operates without any oversight from the regulator». Despite the criticism, the regulator did not officially annul Keplerk's plan, and it, as is evident, is being put into practice.
Faced with a decline in tobacco product sales, 24,000 French tobacco retailers are now trying to diversify their range of goods, including credit cards, loans for purchasing mobile phones and money transfer services. Initially it was assumed that the vouchers would be sold by around 3000-4000 tobacco stores, and later their number was expected to increase. Keplerk plans to charge a commission of 7% on transactions to support these operations. Some representatives of the cryptocurrency sector criticized this initiative, stating that buying Bitcoin online is cheaper and safer.
