Merchants that accept crypto rather than credit cards for payments can expect to save as much as 3.5% — or more.
75% of retailers eyeing crypto payments within 24 months: Deloitte
Improving customer experience, increasing the customer base and a hope their brand is perceived as “cutting edge” were the biggest reasons given for a desire to adopt crypto payments.
Taco tokens: Chipotle adds crypto payments via Flexa
Nearly 3,000 Chipotle restaurants across the U.S. will accept 98 cryptocurrencies as the Mexican-style fast food chain partners with Flexa to support crypto payments.
Russia will inevitably legalize crypto payments says trade minister
“The question is when this will happen, how it will happen and how it will be regulated. Now both the Central Bank and the government are actively engaged in this,” said trade minister Denis Manturov.
More than a third of AMC online payments are crypto or digital: CEO
“Taken together, these various new payment options, impressively, recently represented about 35% of our total online payments,” said AMC Theatres CEO Adam Aron.
Gucci the latest luxury brand to accept crypto payments in store
Gucci’s past efforts into Web3 have culminated with the brand accepting 12 cryptocurrencies at a few select stores, with a wider rollout planned for the future.
Colorful billionaire’s Dubai real estate firm now accepts BTC and ETH
“Offering yet another transactional mode is exciting, and we are glad to recognize the value this technology brings to our customers,” said DAMAC Properties’ general manager of operations Ali Sajwani
Aussie convenience store giant to accept crypto at 170 outlets
On The Run (OTR) will work with Crypto.com to implement its Pay Merchant product, with a Sydney payment systems provider rolling out new terminals to allow consumers to pay with crypto.
Mobile banking app Dave scores $100M investment from FTX US
Dave is the latest in a series of fintech payments apps to offer crypto services, following PayPal, Venmo, and Cash App.
Stripe announces fiat payment support for cryptocurrencies and NFTs
Stripe has partnered with FTX, FTX US, Blockchain.com, Nifty Gateway, and Just Mining to launch a crypto business suite.
Block nets $1.18B Q4 gross profit marking a 47% YoY increase
In total, Block generated $4.42 billion worth of gross profit in 2021 marking a total YoY growth of 62%, however, net profit totaled just $77 million.
Visa Survey Shows Crypto Payments Could Boom In 2022
The payment company giant Visa Inc just surveyed 2,250 small businesses from nine countries to understand if merchants are planning to adopt crypto to receive payments. Results show that over 25% of them want to start doing so this year.
Reuters reported that Visa expects many retail businesses to join the crypto boom starting this year. The payment company has been long involved in the cryptocurrency industry and is interested in its mainstream acceptance as an opportunity to grow its own line of products and services.
Visa currently offers cryptocurrency-linked cards for consumers to make purchases using digital currencies. However, this service doesn’t mean stores directly accept digital assets as payments. The user’s holdings directly turn into a fiat currency “instantly, behind the scenes” as they pay.
Even though Visa consumers are reportedly adopting crypto with over $3.5 billion in crypto-linked digital transactions in 2021, merchants have been skeptical about directly receiving it as payment so far.
Visa’s Crypto Survey Results
Visa surveyed small businesses from the United States, Brazil, Singapore, Canada, Russia, United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, Germany, and Ireland.
Reportedly, small businesses from North America were the least enthusiastic about starting to accept cryptocurrencies as a form of payment. 19% of small businesses from the U.S. and only 8% from Canada want to offer digital currencies as a form of payment this year.
However, over 30% of small retailers from the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Brazil –where the crypto industry is booming– intend to allow users to pay using crypto in 2022.
Furthermore, around three-quarters of the surveyed retailers thought that accepting crypto as a payment option would be “fundamental” for their businesses to grow.
Related Reading | Visa Creates Service To Advise Financial Institutions On Cryptocurrencies
BitPay Chips In
Similarly, CEO of crypto payments platform BitPay Stephen Pair just made comments that contribute to the 2022’s forecast on digital currencies acceptance.
BitPay company provides cryptocurrency payment processing services for retailers and reportedly has seen a growing number of businesses using their services to directly receive digital currencies as payment.
Pair thinks that “There could be an inflection point in 2022″ for the common use of digital coins “where it starts to become a little unusual for you to not have some”. He commented the following:
“I think in 2022, you’ll see many more people — that next wave of people — getting interested in crypto both from an investment perspective and a ‘let’s try it for a payment’ [perspective]…There’s going to be many more places with that service — that you’ll be able to spend crypto and do it in an in-person setting, which may make people more comfortable trying it out than perhaps if it’s on a website where they’re not sure if they’re doing it right or wrong.”
Related Reading | FinTech Behind Cardano’s First Stablecoin Launches Bank Accounts And Visa Debit Cards
Crypto total market cap at $2.0 trillion in the daily chart | Source: TradingView.com
Based On A Twitter Poll, Airbnb Users May Get Crypto Payment This Year
Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb has hinted that the popular travel home-booking company may soon accept crypto payments based on a recent Twitter poll.
Chesky Says Users Want Crypto
A growing number of businesses are making crypto payment available to their customers. However, some businesses are taking an unusual approach to cryptocurrency adoption.
The #1 feature users are requesting in 2022, according to Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, is the feature to pay for bookings in cryptocurrencies.
“If Airbnb could launch anything in 2022, what would it be?” Chesky tweeted over the weekend.
Two days later, he revealed the list of the the top six suggestions out of roughly 4,000 received.
Got 4,000 suggestions. Here are the top 6:
1 – Crypto payments (top suggestion)2 – Clear pricing displays3 – Guest loyalty program4 – Updated cleaning fees5 – More long-term stays & discounts6 – Better customer service
Already working on most, will look into others now! https://t.co/rxEM4BXZci
— Brian Chesky (@bchesky) January 5, 2022
Clear pricing displays, a guest loyalty program, updated cleaning fees, more long-term stays and discounts, better customer service, and “commercial spaces (kitchens, co-working)” are among the other top proposals. The CEO of Airbnb specifically confirmed that the company is looking into commercial spaces, saying:
“Already working on most, will look into others now.”
Some governments ban foreign transfers, according to one person who suggested crypto. As a result, he relies on digital currencies. “We are looking into this.” Chesky replied.
In the travel sector, Airbnb maintains an online marketplace. There are already over 5.6 million listings worldwide, according to the company’s website. Airbnb has served over 1 billion clients since its inception in 2007, and over 4 million hosts have listed their properties on the marketplace.
In most countries, Airbnb accepts Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and JCB as payment methods. Also accepted are Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Paypal. Airbnb presently does not accept cryptocurrency as a payment method.
Airbnb will join the ranks of Tesla and AMC, among others, in accepting cryptocurrency as payment if the popular recommendation is implemented.
BTC/USD slumps to $42k. Source: TradingView
Related article | IPO Windfalls from Airbnb Could Boost Bitcoin: DCG CEO
Airbnb Rival Already Into Crypto Pay
While Airbnb is just getting started with crypto pay, DTravel, a decentralized home-sharing platform made that possible in 2021
The platform is integrated into the Travala.com. This is managed by users holding the DTravel (TRVL) token, which is backed by Binance.
Customers may book 250,000 homes using cryptocurrency. With a global network of 20,000 homes, the TRVL token can be used to book homes. The TRVL token is listed on exchanges such as MEXC Global, Bybit, Gate, and KuCoin.
Airbnb has been considering crypto pay for quite sometime too. “We have been following the space for quite a long time,” Chesky said, noting that “the founder of Coinbase was an early employee of ours.”
“The key is when regular people understand how the new technology improved their lives, beyond the initial excitement,” the CEO added. “I’m particularly enthusiastic about several applications that ordinary people could utilize to improve their daily lives.”
Related article | Dtravel Home-Sharing Platform Arrives on MEXC Global & Bybit Launchpad
Featured Image from Shutterstock, Charts from TradingView.com
How Crypto Empowered Porn Creators In 2021: Less Cant More Freedom
The crypto industry saw the opportunity of a lifetime this year when OnlyFans, a platform known mostly for its adult content, announced it would ban sexually explicit content. The crypto and porn industry together represents a very profitable merge that has just started to happen.
The world of payment methods has a history of hypocrisy, control, and morals, and it tends to not support anything related to sex work.
Reportedly, earlier in the year OnlyFans had decided to shut down all sexually explicit content because of pressure from banks and payment processors. There was a huge backlash and the ban stopped days after its announcement, alleging that the platform had “secured assurances necessary” from the banks.
The platform’s founder and chief executive told Time that banks were refusing to process adult content-related payments.
“OnlyFans stands for inclusion”, they said, but they had been trying to distance themselves from the porn industry, interested in launching a streaming service –which doesn’t allow adult content.
Payment methods have been a burden for porn creators worldwide for years. Their gains are often subject to frozen funds, huge losses, and since there’s not much protection and support offered for sex workers, they need to be extra careful to not become subject to scams and other dangers.
So anonymity and safe digital wallets go really well with this industry. Naturally, many creators and producers have started to see an answer in crypto.
Crypto’s Not The Only One With A Bad Reputation
Cristobal Medoza producer and co-creator of a top Argentinian porn channel called ‘My Bad Reputation’ was one of many to adopt crypto in order to find financial stability and more opportunities. He gave us inside comments on his personal experience, allowing us to take a peek at the industry people love to consume from but try not to support.
New platforms are surging that connect the porn and crypto industry. A great niche for all parties if successful –it needs to be simple, safe, and well-executed–.
It’s a demystification that goes both ways: the amount of porn consumers is very high. If adult content platforms are related to crypto, this might become a blasting cap of mainstream adoption.
Medonza explained that the major porn platforms have already adopted crypto (paying in Bitcoin and USDT), which contrasts with other payment services offered that are very restrictive and using them comes with too many complications and downsides.
However, many smaller adult content platforms don’t use crypto yet, and that becomes a major problem that comes with huge fees to convert the creators’ money to digital assets.
Mendoza added that porn creators are often affected by the banks, which he claims have closed the accounts of many and frozen their funds when finding out their income is related to adult content.
He commented on the OnlyFans sketchy days of adult content baning, alleging that a large of new pornography platforms started to appear, trying to take that big chunk of a very profitable market.
There’s always going to be someone that will take a stake at that market because it generates huge gains. At the end, OnlyFans took a step back because they knew they would loose too much money and others would quickly fill into their role.
Mendoza stated that his adult content channel takes its payments through Binance, and it has become a great option since “it doesn’t question where the incomes come from, there are no types or morality issues with how we make the money,” plus they can easily exchange it.
Further than using crypto as a better payment method, it has also allowed him and his co-creator to make a few investments through trading and hodling.
There’s many people from the industry that still don’t know how to use crypto as a tool for payments and administration.
I think [they] would greatly benefit from crypto … comissions are low, there’s full control over one’s own income.
He mentioned there are many new projects that claim to link the adult content industry with crypto but some are scams, and creators need to be wary and start to educate themselves about cyber security.
Crypto total market cap at $2,1 trillion in the daily chart | Source: TradingView.com
Hot Doges and Bitcoinana Splits on offer at Florida crypto restaurant
The Crypto Street Restaurant accepts all crypto assets for food payments at its store, and has nothing but five star reviews so far.
Central bank tells Thai banks not to offer crypto trading
The Bank of Thailand doesn’t want local banks or businesses using crypto, while the tourism ministry is still trying to attract crypto whales.
Croatia’s Largest Supermarket Chain Rolls Out Bitcoin Payments
Bitcoin has spread its wings far and wide and no nation has been left out. All around the globe, there is bitcoin adoption going on, both as a payment method as well as an investment option. The latest company to implement bitcoin as a method is Croatian supermarket giant, Konzum. The move was announced on Wednesday as part of the chain’s mission to drive crypto payment adoption across its stores.
Pay For Groceries With Bitcoin
In the announcement, Konzum states that customers are now able to pay across its stores with bitcoin. Purchases for things like groceries, hygiene and household supplies, among other products can be checked out from the Konzum online stores that currently carry more than 12,000 items.
Related Reading | MicroStrategy Follows El Salvador’s Lead As It Buys Bitcoin Dip
The retail chain is the largest by far in Croatia. There are over 700 Konzum stores in the nation with over 10,000 employees across the chain. Konzum is basically the Walmart of Croatia as its retail outlets are located throughout the country. The chain also expands to Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, serving over 650,000 customers each day.
For now, Konzum customers can only pay with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in its online stores. However, the supermarket chain plans to roll out crypto payments across all of its stores. This move is the first of its kind in Croatia, making Konzum the first and only retail chain in the country to accept crypto payments.
“The introduction of cryptocurrency payments is another indicator that Konzum is constantly monitoring global trends, introducing innovations and setting the standard in the retail sector.” – Uros Kalinic, member of Konzum’s Management Board for Finance and IT
BTC falls to $56K | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com
A Faster And Easier Way To Pay
Konzum which plans to implement crypto payments in its physical stores said that crypto payments are a simple way to pay. It likened the payment process to card payments which are a fast and efficient way to pay for everyday items. Customers will be able to choose Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as a payment method when they proceed to checkout on the online store.
Related Reading | Canada Marks Launch Of First Bitcoin, Ethereum ETFs With Monthly Payouts
Konzum will use the PayCek system to account for the highly volatile nature of cryptocurrencies. Although exchange rates may change in a short time, PayCek will place a fixed exchange rate at the time of checkout with adequate time to carry out the transaction at the rate displayed.
Currently, Konzum’s online store will accept nine cryptocurrencies. These include Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, USDC, USDT, EOS DAI, Ripple, and Stellar Lumen.
Kalinic also added that Konzum plans to continue its commitment towards the development of innovative technology.
Featured image from CloudSavvy IT, chart from TradingView.com
Paypal Loses AMC Theaters Throne, Bitpay Will Support Shiba Inu Payments
AMC Theather, the largest movie theater company in the world, announced that they will be accepting Shiba Inu (SHIB) as a payment method through Bitpay, becoming their first client to do so.
The company has been working on accepting diverse cryptocurrencies as payment methods for a while and now offers to do so through PayPal, which allows payments in Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Lietcoin (LTC), and Bitcoin Cash (BCH).
However, AMC is also interested in accepting the meme cryptocurrencies Dogecoin (DOGE) and Shiba Inu (SHIB) because of the remarkable popularity both showed on Twitter during polls made by the theater chain CEO Adam Aron.
When CEO Adam Aron conducted the last Twitter poll, Shiba Inu got 124,623 votes in favor, which takes us to this new announcement in which Shiba Inu shares its spotlight with Bitpay. In about 3 months PayPal will cease to be the only payment method that supports cryptocurrencies on the AMC website.
Related Reading | AMC Theaters Considers Accepting Shiba Inu As Payment Amid Growing Interest
Bitpay, as a payment method for the theater chain, does not only allow more cryptos as options -a great marketing strategy for AMC-, but it also emphasizes Paypal limitations with only four crypto coins and services that lack many great features offered by actual crypto wallets.
SHIB price at $0.00004960 in the daily chart | Source: SHIBUSD on TradingView.com
PayPal Gives Fake Numbers As Crypto, Users Say
At the beginning of the year, Paypal launched a new service enabling its customers to “buy, hold and sell cryptocurrency directly from their PayPal account”. Ever since, they reported a 22% yearly increase of active accounts in Q3, now having 361 million users.
For Paypal, this seems to have worked as a rewarding marketing strategy, since the main intention was to attract clients that might stay for other features.
However, Paypal does not provide its users with a crypto wallet and there are no private keys. The crypto bought in PayPal can mostly be useful inside its retail network.
Essentially, what the platform does is hold the user’s cryptocurrencies on its behalf, but does not provide them with a real one. Using Paypal also implies no anonymity and limited options to use the funds, which, for many, defeats the purpose of crypto.
Back to when the company made the announcement, many Reddit users described the feature as something that gives “fake numbers as crypto”, stating that this is not an intent of adoption of crypto, but the monopolization of it, and if the mainstream adoption of crypto were to follow this path, it would not be different as “the banks holding all the money”.
One user suggested that PayPal “will simply let people think they are using Bitcoin when they’re really not, and then use the blockchain as a settlement layer. And then we’re right back in a central bank dystopia.”
PayPal expanded this feature towards Venmo. A spokesperson shared with Bloomberg that offering crypto is “part of Venmo’s continued evolution from a peer-to-peer payments app to a more holistic offering that our customers rely on in their everyday financial lives.”
Related Reading | PayPal Co-founder Peter Thiel Admits He Underinvested In Bitcoin
PayPal Vs. Bitpay
PayPal’s crypto announcements did have some highlights, as its already wide platforms could increase the public’s acceptance of major coins. Some even thought that it could also increase their value, and saw the possibility for the company to allow withdrawals of coins eventually.
However, BitPay crypto-related features are not only better, but truer to crypto ideals. Users claim Bitcoin transfers from other wallets to BitPay are easy, it allows payments from anywhere, Bitcoin can be directly transferred into a debit card or exchanged for other currencies. Creating a Bitcoin wallet in the platform allows the user to spend the coin anywhere by offering to turn it into dollars.
Non-custodial wallets, such as BitPay’s, are described as decentralized because the customer gets to own its private keys and has total control over their funds, opposingly to PayPal’s service.
The rating for user satisfaction between the two platforms reads BitPay (100%) vs. PayPal (97%) according to FinancesOnline. Now being under the eye of AMC’s huge customer base and SHIB’s enthusiasts, will BitPay be overshadowing PayPal as a payment method?
Confirmed: AMC Now Accepts Bitcoin, Ethereum, Two Other Cryptos, Dogecoin To Follow
AMC has now officially become the first theater chain to accept Bitcoin, Ethereum, and cryptocurrency payments on its platform. This has been a long time coming after CEO Adam Aron had first announced the entertainment giant’s plans to accept crypto payments by the end of the year. The announcement had said that it would accept crypto payments online for both movie tickets and concessions.
Crypto Payments On AMC Are Official
Everything on AMC’s end looks to have worked right on schedule as the annulment three months ago had stated that the company would begin accepting crypto payments in the fourth quarter of the year. Aron took to Twitter to announce the exciting news that AMC had in fact begun receiving payments in four cryptocurrencies. These included Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin.
Big newsflash! As promised, many new ways NOW to pay online at AMC. We proudly now accept: drumroll, please… Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin. Also Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal. Incredibly, they already account for 14% of our total online transactions! Dogecoin next. pic.twitter.com/a7pqYBm7HB
— Adam Aron (@CEOAdam) November 12, 2021
Related Reading | SpaceX Dogecoin-Funded DOGE-1 Mission Set To Launch In Q1 2022
At first, Bitcoin was the only crypto that was to be accepted by the change but further reviews had seen the theater chain add more options due to popular demand. One of the reasons being bitcoin carried high transaction fees and would not be the most ideal option for carrying out small transactions. Not long after the bitcoin announcement, CEO Adam Aron had announced that Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin would be joining the lineup.
Doge begins another recovery trend | Source: DOGEUSD on TradingView.com
Other additions came later after Aron had carried out a poll on Twitter. In the poll, he asked the community if they would like to see the popular meme coin Dogecoin accepted and the majority had voted yes. So AMC had incorporated Dogecoin payments for gift cards and plans to introduce Doge payments for movie tickets and concessions.
When Are Dogecoin And Shiba Inu Payments Coming?
In the announcement tweet, Aron had said that Dogecoin payments were coming. There was no definite timeline given for this but with four cryptocurrencies already in operation, speculations are it would not be too far in the future. However, Aron had said nothing about its latest addition to its crypto lineup; Shiba Inu.
Related Reading | AMC Theatres Says Customers Will Soon Be Able To Pay With Shiba Inu
The CEO had carried out another poll on Twitter, but this time for Dogecoin’s rival Shiba Inu. Once again, the majority had voted in favor of adding the meme coin as a payment method and Aron had confirmed in an earnings call that it would be implementing Shiba Inu payments in the future. The SHIB community inquired about when they should expect to be able to pay with their coins, but there has been no update from AMC regarding the matter.
Google Pay, Apple Pay, and PayPal were also introduced alongside cryptocurrency payments.
Featured image from Bloomberg, chart from TradingView.com
Strike Launches New Feature To Allow Users Convert Salaries To Bitcoin
Payments processor Strike has announced the launch of a new feature that will allow users to convert their paychecks to bitcoin. This feature brings workers one step closer to collecting their paychecks in bitcoin. Instead of the employer paying out wages and salaries in BTC, employees can take the paychecks they receive and convert them to cryptocurrency in one easy step.
Receiving Paychecks In Bitcoin
Strike is enabling users to convert all or some of their paychecks into BTC. Instead of cashing into fiat and then having to change back to BTC, users can directly convert to BTC using the paycheck that they receive. The feature is known as “Pay Me in Bitcoin” was announced on Thursday and is one of Strike’s efforts to make BTC readily available to its users.
Related Reading | Why We Could See The First Approved U.S. Bitcoin ETF In October
Strike is best known for helping El Salvador in their journey to bitcoin adoption, but they are also a bitcoin-focused payments processor that allows users to receive and pay in BTC. And with the new feature, get paid in BTC with no hassles.
Strike completely bypasses the need for employers to adopt and start paying their employees in cryptocurrencies. Instead giving employees the power to decide if they would rather convert their paychecks to fiat currency or cryptocurrencies. This also means that employees are not limited by the payments options their employers use. It doesn’t matter the company individuals work for, they can choose to have their paychecks deposited in bitcoin.
BTC price trading above $61,300 | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com
Following The Lead Of Coinbase
Strike’s announcement of the “Pay Me in Bitcoin” feature comes only a few weeks after Coinbase launched a similar feature. In the announcement post, Coinbase shared that customers were now able to deposit their paychecks directly to cryptocurrencies to ease their trading activities and just like Strike, streamline the process of users converting their money to cryptocurrencies.
The feature has been welcome in the crypto space as investors can now decide to deposit their full paycheck or a portion of it into their cryptocurrency tradings accounts. Customers could also choose to deposit their paychecks directly to U.S. dollars on Coinbase, which they can then use to carry out their trading activities on the platform.
Related Reading | Bitcoin Breaks $60,000 Ahead Of SEC ETF Approvals
Similar to Coinbase, Strike announced that the feature will initially be available to users in the United States. Roll-outs for other countries may be in the works but there has been no confirmation of these. Although users can only convert their paycheck to bitcoin on Strike, Coinbase offers users a wider variety as they can convert their paychecks to the over 100 cryptocurrencies currently listed on the exchange.
Featured image from Inc. Magazine, chart from TradingView.com
