European School of Management and Technology (ESMT), a Berlin-based private university, announced that it is the first German institute of higher education to accept bitcoins as a general means of payment for degree tuition and executive education programs.
The university, founded by 25 leading institutions and global companies, offers a full-time MBA, an executive MBA, a master’s in management. Apart from these, it also provides customized executive education programs. The move will allow students, especially those from other countries, to pay their degree costs using bitcoins.
“ESMT is an innovative and future-oriented business school. Integrating bitcoin as a routine method of payment is a logical consequence of digitalization. Especially for international transactions from countries without a well-functioning banking system, the digital currency offers great advantages through the immediate, practically free-of-charge transfer. This makes bitcoins attractive to us as a means of accepted payment,” Georg Garlichs, CFO of ESMT said in a release.
Other universities across the globe including the University of Cumbria in U.K., King’s College in New York, Brazilian university Faculty of Informatics and Management Paulista (FIAP), among others, have been accepting bitcoin payments for tuition and other expenses.
Talking about the blockchain technology that underlies bitcoins, Christoph Burger, blockchain expert at ESMT said, “In addition to reducing transaction costs and providing P2P marketplaces, blockchain also facilitates individual marketing of personal data. This is a feature that offers the data owner an improved position when negotiating with the users of data, especially in the age of big data.”
