How popular are crypto payments among merchants?
According to our surveys, merchants across the board (from micro merchants to key accounts) see their customers interested in paying with cryptocurrencies and are willing to accept them as a means of payment, as long as there are no disadvantages in terms of risk, costs, or complicated processes. So, from our point of view, crypto payments are enjoying increasing popularity on the consumer and merchant side.
Who are the fast adopters?
Crypto payments are becoming increasingly popular at the point of sale (POS) in the luxury sector, the hotel industry, and in restaurants. We also see a positive development in ecommerce as well as among merchants in the tech sector and charities.
What about the slow adopters? What could be challenging for merchants when trying to tap into these new ways of paying?
The retail sector (grocery stores and supermarkets) is probably the slowest to accept this new payment method on a large scale. The biggest acceptance hurdles include the volatility risk, the speed of transaction processing, and the integration of blockchain processes within the existing payment infrastructure. With our solution Worldline Crypto Payments, jointly developed with Bitcoin Suisse, we enable merchants to accept crypto payments like any other payment method (such as credit cards or mobile payments) with the same payments and reconciliation processes. This simplifies the acceptance and merchants can integrate crypto payments in an easy and uncomplicated way.
How to overcome these, to enjoy the benefits?
It is important for payment service providers to integrate crypto payments seamlessly into existing payment processes in an easy and user-friendly way for both merchants and their customers. Various factors, such as the time required for the transaction confirmation in the blockchain, must be solved by the payment processor. With Worldline Crypto Payments, merchants can accept cryptocurrency payments (Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the 2nd Layer protocol Bitcoin Lightning) risk-free, both at the POS and in ecommerce and can, thus, attract potential new customers with this innovative means of payment.
What is a cryptocurrency POS system?
A cryptocurrency PoS system is a solution for deploying a cryptocurrency payment gateway. The PoS system enables merchants to accept cryptocurrencies. It is important for merchants not to be exposed to any acceptance hurdles and to be able to accept crypto payments like any other means of payment. For this reason, Worldline has opted for a simple ‘Bring your own device’ app for the integration of cryptocurrencies at the PoS. This app can easily be downloaded from the Google Play or Apple App Store on any of the merchant’s devices. The merchant can accept crypto payments immediately after a brief onboarding process. Worldline also plans to integrate this App on Android-based POS terminals in the future. In addition, there is already an innovative solution for micro-merchants live, which enables crypto payments for merchants like farm shops or craft markets through a QR code sticker.
What other solutions are out there enabling crypto payments?
In ecommerce, Worldline offers the payment solution Worldline Crypto Payments as ‘yet another payment means’ integrated into the ecommerce solution Saferpay. This means that Worldline merchants can easily integrate crypto payments into their webshop directly or via a web shop plugin and enjoy all the benefits mentioned earlier. At Worldline, we believe that we are very well positioned with our POS and ecommerce solution and that we can react flexibly to the further development of the crypto market. For example, we’ll be able to integrate new cryptocurrencies into Worldline Crypto Payments in a very short period of time or support new payment channels such as the Metaverse. Here, Worldline is already represented with its own showroom in Decentraland and is gaining experience along with its customers.
Besides payment processing at the POS, what other activities can crypto payment solutions enable?
We believe that the current form of crypto payments (e.g. Bitcoin or Ethereum) is only the beginning and that cryptocurrency payments will be an essential part of the adoption of cryptocurrencies, as they can not only be held but also used for the purchase of goods and services in the same way as traditional fiat currencies. This will also help, for example, when central banks issue Central Bank Digital Currencies as Worldline Crypto Payments is already rolled out within the merchant base of Worldline, and new coins can be easily added to our payment solution. This will also help to establish new use cases (e.g. invoice payments with cryptocurrencies) around crypto payments quickly and efficiently, while at the same time achieving a wide adoption among Worldline merchants.
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