The use of cryptocurrency is becoming more popular as more people and industries are starting to embrace it. It took quite a while for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, DogeCoin, and many other more to get where it is today. After all, the father of cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin, has been around since 2008. It was really only a few years ago when it made the spotlight.
Currently, people are buying or investing in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for different reasons. Mainly, this is because they want to have digital assets. For some, they want to make online transactions easier. While many would also gamble with these cryptos. You can check clovr.com to know which online casinos accept Bitcoin and other cryptos if you’re interested in it.
However, people are now also shopping online with cryptocurrencies. Take Shopify as an example. It was just recently when Shopify partnered with CoinPayments. This platform or company helps merchants process payments of 1,800 types of different cryptocurrencies.
CoinPayments is also known to have processed over 5 billion US dollars of cryptocurrency payments since it was founded in 2013. The company provides clients with various shopping cart plugins, APIs, and digital wallets.
Shopify said that the partnership with CoinPayments should make cryptocurrency transactions easier and more accessible to merchants. It would also make the processing of crypto payments cheaper with its reduced fees.
CoinPayments is also proud of this partnership. Its CEO Jason Butcher said that this partnership will be unstoppable in the payments industry. He said, “By bringing our easy-to-use global crypto payments platform together with Shopify’s extensive merchant base, we look forward to delivering a seamless process for anyone looking to do business using cryptocurrencies.”
With this, Shopify now processes payments made by customers using Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, Ripple, and many other more. With this, however, will it help Shopify, widen its reach or market?
This will really depend on how many people use cryptocurrencies for shopping. Crypto Radar claimed recently that in the US, only 6.2 percent of its population owns Bitcoin. Meanwhile, 7.3 percent are planning to buy some in the future. 21.8 percent of the population doesn’t know much about cryptocurrencies or haven’t heard of it. The rest of the population, just do not have the plan to purchase or get any.
In the previous year, there was a survey done by the Foundation for Interwallet Operability or FIO. They found that only 30 percent of cryptocurrency owners used their coins for making payments.
The majority of cryptocurrency owners mainly have coins as their investments or digital assets. What FIO found is also not far from Crypto.com found recently. Their recent survey found that only 34 percent of crypto owners would use their coins for payments.
Overall, the current number of people who own or have Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies still do not seem to appeal to mainstream shoppers. Still, many big companies are already embracing cryptocurrencies. This could be because they believe that cryptos are the future of online transactions and this may really be the case.
People have great reasons as to why they decided to invest or buy Bitcoins. Sure, right now, its value is still hard to predict and fluctuates widely, but there are benefits that people just can’t resist. The use of cryptocurrencies is generally convenient. Unlike bank transactions, approvals are no longer necessary and transactions happen in a few seconds or instantly.
Back to Shopify, this isn’t really the first time that the company noticed cryptocurrencies. In February, Shopify also joined the Libra Association. This is a stablecoin made by Facebook that aims to serve underbanked markets with its Libra cryptocurrency.
Many found this move surprising because, over the years and months, Libra has lost many of its top members like PayPal. Some even opposed its development. However, Libra is now being developed and introduced as a stablecoin. This means that Libra is pinned to fiat currencies and doesn’t work with mining algorithms.
This means that Libra could be a more viable payment option compared to cryptocurrencies because of the stability of its value. It may also be easier to widen its reach because Libra will be tethered to other Facebook-owned platforms like Messenger, WhatsApp, and Facebook’s own digital wallet, Calibra.
Well, what’s good for Shopify is that CoinPayments also process payments with known stablecoins like TrueUSD, Gemini Dollar or GUSD, and USD Coin. And so, once Libra takes off, it will be likely that Shopify will also be accepting Libra payments in the future.
