On 3 September 2020, Coca-Cola Amatil X invested in digital asset and payment platform Centrapay, during the New Zealand startup’s seed funding round.
Established in 2018, Amatil X was created for the major bottling firm Coca-Cola Amatil to collaborate and invest in technology startups. It aims to find new solutions and business models to work with in the future potentially. Coca-Cola owns a 30% stake in the bottling company.
Head of Amatil X, Alix Rimington, revealed they’ve already been working with Centrapay, allowing customers to pay for their products using digital assets or cryptocurrencies via the Sylo Smart Wallet. In this project, customers could use the Wallet at any of Amatil’s vending machines ‘with a QR code payment sticker.’
Centrapay’s goal is to democratize digital assets, initially building the API’s to connect consumer apps and merchant systems directly.
A key aspect of Centrapay is its vision of value exchange. CEO Jerome Faury remarks how ‘the global money supply’ as we know it today is ‘evolving rapidly.’ The way value is exchanged is most likely going to change dramatically in the next ten years. Centrapay dedicates themselves to the ‘creation, distribution, and payment of digital assets,’ replacing intermediaries’ roles in this process.
Faury also spoke of the ‘strong strategic alignment’ between the two firms. “Both Centrapay and Coca-Cola Amatil are committed to preserving consumers’ privacy and data ownership rights, whilst increasing business value,” said Faury. Amatil X has indeed demonstrated a keen interest in becoming more involved in the newest ways of value exchange in this investment.
Coca-Cola Amatil isn’t the first Coke bottler to explore blockchain. In the U.S., Coke One North America Services (CONA) is trialing using public ethereum for supply chain transparency.
Over the past few years, more large brands have been accepting cryptocurrency payments. While startups like Square have been early adopters, Paypal confirmed it was developing digital asset and cryptocurrency capabilities just a couple of months ago.
