If you find yourself in the Gangnam district of Seoul in desperate need of a makeover and only bitcoin to hand, you’re in luck.
The area, made famous by Psy’s world-conquering 2012 hit song ‘Gangnam Style’, now has a bitcoin-accepting hair and beauty salon, called With Beauty Salon.
Their head of marketing, Lee Kyung Won, told a local blogger he hoped that bitcoin would “attract trend-setters who are the kind of people we are looking for as customers”.
The blogger, Kim Dong-Hyun, appears to have been their first bitcoin-paying customer on 2nd January. It’s not clear what treatment the self-described “office worker in his mid-30s” had, but he’s confident bitcoin would permeate South Korean society quickly if merchants began to accept it. “Koreans are very sensitive to IT trends,” he wrote.
According to coinmap.org, Seoul currently has seven bitcoin-accepting businesses, including a baguette shop and a service that lets you load up a pre-paid VISA card with bitcoin.
With Beauty Salon began accepting bitcoin on 30th December 2013 after the head of marketing raised the idea. He was apparently less optimistic about how many of his customers would actually end up using bitcoin, saying that the payment option would be most useful for foreigners staying in country.
Closer to home, a London hair clinic recently completed a hair transplant that was paid for in bitcoin. Vinci Hair Clinic has apparently been “inundated” with requests to pay for procedures in bitcoin and with many of their customers flying in from abroad, they say bitcoin payments help them avoid international transaction fees.
Additionally, paying with bitcoin would also help protect the privacy of customers who may not want anyone to know they’ve had the procedure.
But if makeovers and hair transplants aren’t enough, you can head over to Miami where the Vanity Cosmetic Surgery accepts bitcoin for plastic and reconstructive surgery.