Mexican university starts accepting bitcoins

A coffee shop, Café Punta del Cielo founded in 2004, located on the campus of Mexico's Universidad de las Américas Puebla (UDLAP) is now accepting bitcoin payments, as reported by CoinDesk. It is the first university in the Latin American region to accept the digital currency.

It joins the list of prominent universities including MIT in the US, Canada's Simon Fraser University (SFU) and Spain's Pompeu Fabra University that provide the facility of bitcoin ATMs or accept bitcoin for payment in school stores.

Bitso, a Latin American-focused bitcoin exchange provider, is providing the bitcoin integration for the cafe. It recently raised an undisclosed seed round led by Digital Currency Group and launched a payment processing service, BitsoPagos.

Jose Rodriguez, VP of payments of Bitso, said in a statement:

"We expect this successful BitsoPagos integration to create the traction for more Punta del Cielo and many other merchants to adopt Bitcoin."

He said that, by accepting bitcoin payments, the Café Punta del Cielo location will expose more students to the technology while potentially encouraging other local franchises to accept the payment option.