Shopping with cryptocurrency remains a novel or even strange experience for most consumers.
That being said, PYMNTS' investigate shows that among technology-driven consumers, more than 1 in 3 (35%) prefer merchants that accept cryptocurrency, with 26% saying they would go as far as switching merchants to shop where cryptocurrency is accepted. Nearly 1 in 4 everyday consumers (23%) similarly say they prefer merchants that accept cryptocurrency.
as consumers increasingly test digital wallets and merchants accept them, the time has come for broader adoption of cryptocurrency payments as a key component of the global ecosystem of payment solutions.
PYMNTS recently sat down with pair of estebanthe CEO of the crypto processing platform BitPayto discuss where it sees blockchain-based payments in the future and how the company supports merchants and customers by adding new altcoin options like litecoin.
Show me the money
BitPay began supporting the litecoin cryptocurrency in July 2021. Since then, the company has processed more than 200,000 litecoin transactions, valued at more than $35 million, on its partner merchant network.
โMost merchants would like to accept all payment methods,โ Pair said. The same goes for your customers. "The [litecoin] the community has been very supportive, they are buying everything with it. They really pay attention to the merchants on our platform and tend to become patrons of those businesses.โ
In just a year and a half, litecoin has climbed the payment ranks to become BitPay's second most popular currency for cryptocurrency-based transactions, accounting for 27% of all merchant purchases, behind only bitcoin at 41%.
โLitecoin bills itself as the silver of bitcoin gold, and they have always focused on payments and made it a great solution for making payments,โ Pair said.
Litecoin, which was founded in 2011, offers some advantages over its more well-known big brother, bitcoin. Litecoin transactions generally settle faster than bitcoin transactions, and the fee for litecoin payments is just one cent, compared to 30 cents for bitcoin transactions.
โWhile someone could use bitcoin for larger purchases of Luxury articleswe tend to see litecoin users paying more daily payments with it, smaller, often repeatable transactions of just a few hundred dollars,โ Pair told PYMNTS.
The difference in the use case of the two currencies, he added, is less about the price of the token and more about how bitcoin's larger network and underlying mining power could make consumers more comfortable using it to buy items. higher priced items, such as a car or a designer handbag. .
room to grow
Four in 10 consumers who own cryptocurrency made online purchases using their digital assets in the past 30 days, according to PYMNTS research.
While merchants should, in theory, be drawn to the fact that cryptocurrency holders tend to be younger, more tech-savvy, and relatively wealthier than most other buyers, further adoption has yet to materialize. widespread use of cryptocurrency payments.
โThere are a lot of merchants who aren't ready yet,โ Pair said. โThey may serve a demographic that buys more now and pays later than a wealthier customer base that uses cryptocurrency. Maybe they just don't see demand from their individual customers for this payment option, but for many other merchants, we can represent 5-10% of their transaction volume.โ
Still, thousands of merchants around the world use BitPay to sell their products using cryptocurrency, and the company expects to add even more as they continue to grow.
As for the crypto elephant in the room, namely the FTX implosion last month, Pair sees it as good news that mismanagement and criminal activity are being weeded out of the industry.
โIt's terrible that what happened happened,โ he said, โand that it was allowed to happen. But nothing about the underlying infrastructure or architecture of bitcoin or other blockchains has really changed. As we move forward, my view is that we will see the decentralized technology that underpins the blockchain industry help create a new foundation for building more secure systems.โ
After all, BitPay absorbs the transactional volatility of its merchant network while providing business clients with next-generation benefits like real-time access to funds.
As cryptocurrencies emerge from the turmoil of the past year, the acceptance of blockchain-based payment options continues to offer a great new opportunity for merchants to broaden their customer audience and deepen their relationships with existing shoppers.
How consumers pay online with stored credentials
Convenience drives some consumers to store their payment credentials with merchants, while security concerns stop other customers. For "How We Pay Digitally: Editing Stored Credentials," a collaboration with Amazon Web Services, PYMNTS surveyed 2,102 US consumers to explore the consumer dilemma and reveal how merchants can beat holdouts.
