Autor Cointelegraph by Bryan OShea

Emirates, the Dubai-based flagship carrier, has launched Crypto.com Pay on its website and app, enabling eligible United Arab Emirates residents make flight bookings with cryptocurrencies, the airline said Tuesday.Mobile users are sent to the Crypto.com app to authorize payment from their wallet, while desktop customers scan a QR code at checkout, the companies said in an announcement. Emirates settles in UAE dirhams rather than holding crypto, with Crypto.com handling the conversion.The move “reflects the rapidly evolving preferences of a younger, digitally fluent generation who manage their money and plan their journeys primarily from their phones,” said Adnan Kazim, Emirates’ deputy president and chief commercial officer. Neither company indicated whether they would expand the Emirates service beyond eligible UAE residents.The launch implements a partnership announced in July 2025. Cointelegraph reported in May that Crypto.com had received a UAE central bank Stored Value Facilities (SVF) license, which the company said at the time could support integrations with Emirates and Dubai Duty Free.An SVF license allows non-bank companies to hold customers’ money or crypto in a digital wallet and process payments under central bank oversight. It lets customers fund payments with cryptocurrencies while merchants receive dirhams or approved dirham-backed stablecoins.According to CoinGecko, Crypto.com handled around $686 million in trading volume in the 24 hours up to the time of writing. Emirates is not the region’s first airline to add a crypto checkout option. Air Arabia began accepting the dirham-backed AE Coin stablecoin for flight bookings in May 2025.Related: Bhutan launches tourism crypto payments with Binance Pay and DK BankCointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.

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Singapore-based crypto travel platform Travala has launched a protocol it says lets artificial intelligence agents search, reserve and pay for hotels with USDC (USDC) on layer-2 blockchain Base, extending agentic AI stablecoin payments into travel bookings.The Travala Travel MCP is live through Claude Desktop, with outside developers able to integrate it into their own travel agents, Travala said in a statement sent to Cointelegraph.The company said the system connects Travala’s hotel inventory to AI agents through the Model Context Protocol, an open standard for linking AI apps to external tools. Payments use Coinbase’s x402 protocol on Base, with Travala saying the setup allows gasless USDC transactions, near-instant settlement and transaction costs of about $0.01 per booking.AI travel still needs human approvalHowever, final payment authorization still requires manual approval from the traveler, meaning it’s not fully autonomous but more advanced than a chatbot that only recommends itineraries.The launch comes as crypto companies try to make stablecoins useful for machine-to-machine commerce and follows a wave of crypto payment infrastructure aimed at AI agents. Cointelegraph reported recently that x402-linked wallets on Base surpassed 100 million transactions, while Fireblocks, MoonPay, Exodus and Oobit have launched products for AI-driven stablecoin payments.Cumulative agentic transfer volumes on Base. Source: ChainalysisTravala framed the launch as an early step toward autonomous travel booking, even as travelers still retain final approval over payments, and said it is offering developers a 10% Coinbase Wrapped BTC (cbBTC) rebate on completed stays booked through its agents.“The launch of the world’s first agentic AI travel protocol marks the death of the checkout button,” Travala CEO Juan Otero said, calling it the start of “a truly autonomous travel economy.”Travala said the setup uses ERC-7715 session keys, allowing the AI agent to request a payment while keeping final signing authority inside the traveler’s wallet. The company said the protocol can maintain context across searches, bookings and cancellations in a single chat thread.Related: Coinbase-backed x402 adds batch settlement for AI agent paymentsTravala plans broader travel rolloutTravala said the protocol covers more than 2.2 million hotels, including listings from Marriott, Hilton and IHG, which are sourced through its aggregator partners. The company said it plans to expand the protocol beyond hotels to other travel products, including flights, and expects its Travala (AVA) loyalty token to support future Travel MCP use cases.Travala was founded in 2017 and competes with crypto-friendly travel platforms such as Sleap.io and Alternative Airlines, though its latest protocol shifts the comparison from crypto checkout toward AI-agent booking infrastructure. The company says it accepts more than 100 cryptocurrencies alongside fiat currencies. Magazine: AI-driven hacks could kill DeFi — unless projects act nowAdditional reporting by Christina Comben.