Crypto Checkout: How Digital Currencies are Shaping E-commerce in 2024
In Brief
Cryptocurrency is gaining popularity in e-commerce, enabling various transactions like grocery shopping and hotel bookings, prompting online retailers to reconsider their business models.
Cryptocurrency is not a fad anymore. It’s here to stay, and it’s gaining more popularity and traction in the e-commerce world. Nowadays, you can do many things, from grocery shopping to booking luxury hotels, using cryptocurrency.
Naturally, this has prompted many online retailers to consider shaking up their business models. But why do online retailers take crypto? What are the benefits?
Why Do Online Retailers Take Crypto?
Over the last few years, cryptocurrencies have proved they can be solid replacements (or at least supplements) for the traditional financial system. They offer many benefits to retailers, including:
Hassle-free Money
It’s becoming harder for people to trust banks and their business ethics, making many people turn to cryptocurrencies. People are afraid to put all their gold in one chest, and banks are no different. Providing cryptocurrency payment options gives you immediate access to the incoming cash. Many people now hold these views, and they form a good portion of the e-commerce consumer base. So, businesses are clearly motivated to pursue crypto payments.
Lower Fees
Most of the time, traditional payment companies charge a lot of money to handle payments. Online retailers could pay up to 4% of every transaction. With cryptocurrencies, on the other hand, there are no middlemen, which makes transactions much cheaper. This is especially helpful for small online stores that are trying to make ends meet.
A Wider Net
The latest reports show that there are about 2 billion unbanked people in the world who don’t have access to everyday financial services, often because of political or economic crises. On top of that, there are many who do not trust the centralized financial system. Since crypto is an international currency with no political affiliations, anyone with a web connection can be part of the global financial system.
Sahar Salama, CEO and Founder of TPAY MOBILE, supported this idea by proposing a “cashless society” where digital currencies and services must be “accessible and appealing to everyone.”
But it’s not just about making money more available to everyone; businesses can also use crypto to reach new markets and offer their products to more people. There will be more people, which means there will be more chances to sell.
Top E-commerce Platforms that Take Crypto
These arguments, and many more, have convinced major online retailers to accept cryptocurrency as a payment method. Some of them are:
Overstock
When Bitcoin first became widely available in 2014, Overstock was among the first big e-commerce merchants to embrace it. It sells numerous items like gadgets, clothes, and furniture, and you can pay for all of them with Bitcoin. Overstock is now a go-to spot for crypto shoppers thanks to this move.
Thanks to its partnership with ShapeShift, the platform currently supports more crypto assets, such as Ethereum, Ripple, and Litecoin. Customers can easily choose crypto at the checkout point and pay via their wallet.
Twitch
With user-friendly membership and contribution systems, Twitch has become well-known among content providers. One major way that Twitch promotes cryptocurrency is by letting users pay their favorite streamers with cryptocurrency. PayPal and other payment platforms make this function possible, so streamers need to set it up ahead of time.
These platforms let users send tips in more than 50 cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin. Thanks to its partnership with BitPay, Twitch also lets users add to their “bits” using cryptocurrency.
This streaming service is very open to cryptocurrencies, and they’ve even run ads in the past to encourage its adoption. For instance, in 2020, the business started giving a 10% discount to people who paid for channel packages with cryptocurrency. At the moment, there isn’t an offer like this on the platform, but because it supports crypto, there could be one in the future.
AMC Theaters
AMC offers the best movie-going experience with state-of-the-art technology and a huge chain of theaters all over the US.
Through its relationship with PayPal, AMC started accepting cryptocurrency as payment. This put AMC on the map and turned it into one of the most popular platforms among crypto holders. The same applies to the company’s partnership with BitPay, a reliable platform, to help users reserve their seats with minimum fees and hassle.
The AMC mobile app also works with cryptocurrencies. You can use coins like Bitcoin, Dogecoin, and Shiba Inu to get tickets. The arrangement has been a huge success; by mid-2022, the CEO of AMC had already claimed that crypto payments accounted for roughly a third of all online payments.
Newegg
The popular online retailer NewEgg now uses crypto for its electronics and hardware products. This is big news for the industry because it shows that cryptocurrency is gaining traction as a reliable payment method.
Besides Bitcoin, you can also now buy things from Newegg using Ethereum, Dogecoin, Litecoin, and many other coins, thanks to their partnership with BitPay, much like a lot of other businesses. Of course, we’re still waiting for Newegg to allow BitPay payments for subscriptions and pick-up orders as well.
But, using Bitcoin, you can easily use your crypto wallet to make any sort of payment on NewEgg. You just need to hit “Pay with Bitcoin” and send the amount to the wallet address shown on the page.
Travala
Besides a growing presence in over 200 countries and millions of hotels, Travala has managed to distinguish itself from the likes of Booking.com by accepting cryptocurrency as an online booking method.
The platform currently supports over 100 cryptocurrencies, from Bitcoin and Ethereum to Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin. Its partnership with Binance Pay and several other exchanges allows Travala to cast a wide net, capturing customers from any demographic available.
The “Smart Program” is another attractive element that Travala offers. Customers must buy and hold AVA tokens to move up the program’s levels, getting bigger savings and prizes as they improve their rankings.
Remaining Hurdles
With new technologies on the horizon, especially AI, cryptocurrency can offer tremendous potential for both e-commerce platforms and consumers. If it wasn’t for a string of unsolved issues, many more platforms would’ve embraced them as a payment method.
Some of these hurdles are:
Asset Volatility
The unpredictability of cryptocurrency prices is a major obstacle. Cryptocurrencies, on the other hand, can have big price changes in very short amounts of time. This puts businesses at risk because they might get paid in crypto that goes down in value before they can turn it into cash. Therefore, businesses must have ways to quickly change crypto to fiat and lower this risk and avoid losing money.
Not Enough Traction
While crypto has come a long way into e-commerce, many small and big players need bigger numbers to convince them that there’s still a big enough customer base to capture by accepting crypto payments.
Slow & Limited
Ironically, the most popular cryptocurrencies in e-commerce, Bitcoin and Ethereum, are also among the slowest coins available. Plus, as transaction orders pile up, they can easily suffer from scalability issues, adding to the delay and fees.
Overall, e-commerce platforms and online retailers can gain so much by embracing crypto, but this can only happen in time, with public education and serious regulatory changes.
Disclaimer
In line with the Trust Project guidelines, please note that the information provided on this page is not intended to be and should not be interpreted as legal, tax, investment, financial, or any other form of advice. It is important to only invest what you can afford to lose and to seek independent financial advice if you have any doubts. For further information, we suggest referring to the terms and conditions as well as the help and support pages provided by the issuer or advertiser. MetaversePost is committed to accurate, unbiased reporting, but market conditions are subject to change without notice.
About The Author
Victoria is a writer on a variety of technology topics including Web3.0, AI and cryptocurrencies. Her extensive experience allows her to write insightful articles for the wider audience.
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Victoria is a writer on a variety of technology topics including Web3.0, AI and cryptocurrencies. Her extensive experience allows her to write insightful articles for the wider audience.
