I rented three cars in the past week. At one of the rental offices there was a notice saying: "For all forms of payment that are not credit card, we require two proofs of residence and a copy of your last pay stub. $500 will be withdrawn from your bank account until the car is returned."
Obviously these measures are to assure that the cars are not stolen etc.
What would it take to have a rental agency such as this accept bitcoin payments? How could a level of trust be guaranteed? A third party initiative that could create the reassurance that credit cards provide would be greatly beneficial for bitcoin in these situations.
I think don't think credit cards are going away anytime soon because of this exact issue - the CC is really just and easy way to do escrow. The banking aspect will disappear though - it would be trivial just to send the agency an XBT deposit and then they could return it when you return the car.
Has anyone tried renting a car using a CC issued through XAPO yet?
Oh yeah, the rest of that notice said something about the same requirements applied for prepaid Visa etc. so I guess that would include Xapo cards.