An Edinburgh music school will
begin to accept tuition payments in the form of cryptocurrency.
A Scottish music school will
begin accepting cryptocurrency for tuition payments following demand from
students, it was announced this week. The Morningside School of Music in
Edinburgh said it was responding to suggestions from adult pupils in the school,
many of whom now work in the city’s burgeoning fintech sector.
Morningside’s director, Linda
Boyd, said the school had previously used cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC)
to make business purchases and could see the utility in accepting it as a form
of payment.
She said, “We sometimes use things like Bitcoin to pay for goods for the school, so we know how fast and easy it is and want our music students to be able to do the same.”
Boyd said the school’s
decision to accept cryptocurrency was an example of a small business following
the recent example set by large businesses, adding that it simply represented a
viable alternative payment method.
“Some larger companies across
the world are already doing this, so it’s just a matter of time before smaller
businesses like ours start doing the same. It’s just about giving our customers
another way of paying and making life easier for them.”
Boyd referenced the capital
city’s growing fintech industry, noting that many requests for the school to
accept cryptocurrency came from people working in that industry.
“Edinburgh’s got a big fintech
industry and many of our pupils work or study in that sector, so for them this
is a perfectly natural way to pay,” Boyd said.
The financial technology
industry has been on an upward trajectory in Edinburgh since 2019. FinTech
Scotland, which operates in conjunction with Edinburgh University, was recently
awarded a 22.5 million euro ($30.9 million) grant to establish a Global Open
Finance Centre of Excellence in the city, in recognition of its status as a
prominent national fintech cluster.
Boyd said cryptocurrency
payments for a range of goods and services would become commonplace in the near
future.
“Cryptocurrency is here to
stay and will eventually become a routine way for people to pay for services of
all descriptions,” she said.
Source Cointelegraph