Thai Retail Giant to Introduce Crypto Coin for Its Shopping Malls

Thailand’s biggest shopping centre developer is planning to introduce a digital currency among employees, Bloomberg reported Thursday.

Currently, Central Retail Corp (CRC) distributes “C-Coin” to its 80,000 employees globally. The digital currency is based on blockchain technology and distributed on merit on top of the employees’ regular compensation. 

The company says that the currency can also be used as a substitute for cash at restaurants or buy products and services from partners under Central Retail. 

Once the so-called sandbox phase is complete, the corp. plans to expand the offering to customers and the public.

According to Kowin Kulruchakorn, a chief innovative officer at Central Tech, the public members will be introduced to the currency once all employees adopt the token and judge by its performance.

“We’ll be looking to enhance the C-Coin after we have used it within our network,” Kowin said in an interview. “If our employees are able to use the C-Coin, then our customers should have no problems with it.” 

Central Tech is a unit of the retail giant that invented the C-Coin and handles all of CRC’s Omni-channel and e-commerce platforms.

The manner in which the tokens might be distributed to the public, including whether they’d be listed or available for trading, is yet to be further elaborated by Central Tech.

The Chirathivat family, which retains about 70% of the company, controls Central Retail.

The Central Group operates shopping malls under the Central and Central Embassy brands, as well as speciality stores. Outside Thailand, it also owns Italian department store La Rinascente, Danish retailer Illum, and the Big C hypermarket chain in Vietnam.