Uber, a decentralized taxi service has denied any plans to integrate bitcoin with the service. The company is accepting payment only in traditional currencies.

The unverified information came from one of the Uber support representatives who was asked by a custumer whether the company accepted payments in bitcoins. In response, the company's employee said that Uber was working on integrating bitcoin "as of now," according to a screenshot of an email posted on the photo-sharing website Imgur.

However, when asked about the probability of accepting bitcoin payments, another Uber representative told Coindesk: "This story isn't true".

Uber is a popular transportation network service available in 59 countries and 300 cities around the world. Uber's mobile app enables riders to submit a trip request which immediately routes to part-time taxi drivers.

The company's refuse to integrate bitcoin may seem strange considering the fact that Braintree, a mobile payments company which cooperates with Uber, enables merchants to accept bitcoin payments.

As Coinfox recently reported, the Uber service was banned in Italy by a court ruling on the grounds of creating “unfair competition” for the Italian taxi drivers. BITTaxi, a bitcoin app for paying taxi services, has won the hackathon in Rome and will be integrated into the smartphone app competing with the Uber network in Italy.

Daria Petushkova