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The 2024 ForumPay Crypto Spending Report presented promising insights into the views held by financial institutions and business leaders on adopting crypto payments. According to Ripple’s New Value Report: Crypto Trends in Business & Beyond, 72% of global finance leaders gained confidence in the crypto industry over the course of 2023, while 44% saw crypto payments specifically as the “biggest accelerator for the adoption of crypto and digital assets.”
ForumPay has also found that merchants that adopt crypto payments are able to expand their customer base and increase revenue. The advantages of crypto payments, such as cross-border transactions, lower transaction fees than standard payment rails, increased privacy, and faster transfers, entice many consumers to convert to crypto and use their funds for payments. Studies have also found that consumers are more likely to choose a merchant that has adopted crypto payments over another that has not, as it shows they are forward-thinking, aware of market trends, and keen to please customers by adapting the user experience.
Reaching a wider customer base
Cryptocurrency payments are broadening the customer base for businesses worldwide, particularly in regions such as Africa, where traditional currencies are often unreliable and banking services are limited. By way of example, Cherry Servers is a cloud infrastructure provider operating in 140 countries. They adopted crypto payments following a resounding request from their customer base. They found that offering their customers cryptocurrency payments facilitated accessibility to its cloud services, especially among the unbanked population, which made up a significant proportion of their customers in Africa.
The adoption of crypto payments provided a universal payment method, simplifying transactions for their customers, and also allowed the company to easily convert back into traditional currencies. According to Vaidas Rutkauskas, CEO of Cherry Servers, “Accepting crypto payments is one of the most successful business decisions.” The anonymity factor was another advantage of crypto payments that attracted new customers to Cherry Servers’ services. While all crypto payments are transparent, they are completely private, as no personal information is requested or stated at any point during the transaction process. This is a significant decision-making factor for many consumers when it comes to choosing between one merchant and another.
Lower transaction costs compared to traditional payment rails
While crypto payments are gaining in popularity, credit and debit card transactions are still the most prevalent payment method. However, they come at a significant cost for both buyers and sellers. With fees ranging from 1.5% to 3.5% per transaction and sometimes climbing as high as 6%, merchants are forced to absorb these costs or pass them onto consumers by increasing the prices of products. A lack of competition in the credit card industry has led to a perpetual cycle of high transaction fees, impacting consumers by inflating prices without any real improvements to the service or efficiency.
In contrast, the adoption of crypto payments offers a compelling alternative to traditional payment methods. Crypto payments incur processing fees, which is the price charged to enter each transaction into the blockchain, crypto’s public ledger. These fees are often as low as between 0% and 2%, significantly undercutting the costs associated with credit card transactions. Although the price of each transaction may fluctuate depending on the time of the day, when it comes to large transactions executed using cryptocurrency, they are generally more cost-effective compared to the same transaction carried out using traditional payment methods like credit or debit cards.
Safe, secure transactions
Another reason many businesses choose to adopt crypto payments is due to the extra level of security they offer, thanks to the underlying blockchain technology. Transactions entered into blocks are encrypted and inherently immutable, which reduces the risk of fraud and chargebacks. Chargebacks are a consumer protection mechanism that allows individuals to dispute unauthorized or fraudulent transactions made with their credit or debit cards. Introduced into the payments sphere over 50 years for consumer protection, it is often used maliciously to abuse the system. However, with cryptocurrency payments, these risks are removed from the equation, allowing both consumers and businesses to transact safely and confidently.
Adopt crypto payments with ForumPay
All in all, the reasons for adopting crypto payments are clear and straightforward. As a safer, more cost-effective, and faster payment method, cryptocurrencies are swiftly becoming mainstream, preferred, and an expected option for online transactions. ForumPay’s crypto payments solution can facilitate crypto adoption for forward-thinking merchants and businesses. Alongside the benefits already mentioned above, merchants also benefit from transaction speeds that are as fast as, if not faster than, cards, with incoming funds settled in the currency of their choosing on the next business day. ForumPay has been designed to integrate seamlessly into any existing online workflow or PoS system. In fact, no integration is needed to accept payments from any mobile-connected device. Our open API also provides a simple means to expand payment ecosystems to include cryptocurrency, and our payment gateway is already pre-integrated into many popular e-commerce shopping carts.
If you are a business and have yet to start accepting payments in cryptocurrency, book a meeting with one of our crypto payment experts. They’re available to answer all your questions. Alternatively, visit forumpay.com for more information.
