In This Article
There’s an abundance of articles online discussing the benefits of crypto payment gateway as a payment medium. After all, closing the education gap in perpetual pursuance of Web3 has never been so important. Nevertheless, it still remains to understand the scope of these benefits in the context of using fiat as a payment method:
Indeed, crypto is not the only way to increase one’s cross-border potential – establishing connections with local payment processors is something that can be completed without too many snags. Equally, a niche can be achieved without joining the Web3 gaggle – one that can improve SEO performance while lowering overheads. And let’s not forget that there are fantastic strategies at play to reduce customer shopping basket abandonment in e-commerce that don’t require the integration of crypto.
However, as the years pass by and blockchain technology ties up more and more of its loose ends, it’s difficult to see the advantages of fiat in its wake. That’s why, today, crypto and fiat will be going head to head as competing payment methods to put a rest to the debate – once and for all.
Marketing Effectiveness
Fiat payment options are vast – there are 180 officially-established fiat currencies in the world. By adding a EUR payment option to your site, you are immediately improving your ability to market your service in Europe. The same goes for other currencies such as the Great British Pound or the Australian Dollar. It’s pretty easy to do too – you’d simply instruct a service such as FreshBooks, PayPal or Stripe to carry out instant conversions on your behalf.
However, there’s a problem – worldwide currency support is expected nowadays. In fact, it would be out of the ordinary if a site only accepted one or two kinds of fiat. That means, a news article announcing your grand jump into the Canadian market won’t be that interesting, especially when your competitors are already pretty established in the region.
According to Statista, businesses in the United States alone spent $79.2 billion of their marketing budget on SEO, regardless of the kinds of fiat that they accept. Indeed, the search engines are oversaturated with competition. There are only so many spots available on the first page of a google search for ‘e-commerce platforms accepting Euros’. As such, you’ll have to increase your budget to comply with the laws of supply and demand to acquire reasonable levels of traffic.
And here’s where crypto claims a point. By implementing a crypto payment gateway like CryptoProcessing or CoinGate, you’re able to fill out a brand new niche when it comes to SEO for half the price. And that’s not all – this is a niche that is growing exponentially. Last year, the size of the crypto market was valued at 4.9 billion. That figure is expected to skyrocket to 67.4 billion by 2026.
So, not only are you going to acquire SEO-related benefits almost immediately, but you’ll quite easily establish yourself on search engines for years to come. You’ll also be able to publish company media on a range of new community sites, such as CoinTelegraph, through which you’ll immediately gain traction in a tight-knit community of crypto enthusiasts.
We’re not saying you ought to trade in fiat payments for crypto, but it’s absolutely worth accepting a number of crypto currencies to improve your marketing effectiveness.
Overheads
Fiat processing is a well-established market with best-in-class security (so the story goes). Indeed, when using a payment processor such as Visa, a merchant is thoroughly protected against any data-breaches or man-in-the-middle attacks. Security is ultimately embedded in the software development lifecycle, and the technology has been tried and tested over decades. Moreover, unique and technologically complex features such as tap-to-pay and Visa’s Token Service (VTS) make the payment process incredibly convenient for users, reducing checkout drop-off.
These are the two benefits that the fiat argument can put forward when discussing a minimisation of overheads – better security reduces instances of hacks and fines, while greater convenience reduces the customer drop-off rate.
Indeed, these benefits would be understandable, except they are not unique to fiat processing gateways – crypto payment processors such as CryptoProcessing are just as secure, if not more so, and have a best-in-class client experience. However, when we’re talking about overheads, crypto has much more to offer.
Importantly, crypto eliminates two notorious revenue-gobblers – requirements for rolling reserves and high fees. Rolling reserves are a requirement for online merchants. For example, an account provider may ask for the merchant to put aside 10% of its monthly turnover to cover the costs of chargebacks. However, when accepting payments in crypto, chargebacks are eliminated completely due to the inherent transparency of the blockchain.
So, not only does a blockchain business stamp out chargebacks – where for every $100 in chargebacks, the true chargeback cost is $240 in time wasted, fees, penalties and additional losses – but rolling reserves are eliminated too, leaving more capital available to be invested back into the business. Moreover, in a world where an estimated 80% of chargebacks are fraudulent, it’s good to keep the criminals at bay.
And that’s not the only benefit that affects your business budget. Fees for blockchain businesses are mind-bogglingly low. It’s likely you’re used to the 3.5% that fiat payment processors such as Visa charge per transaction, so you’ll be surprised to know that average fees for crypto payments sit around the 1% mark. When we observe market leaders such as CryptoProcessing.com, this number plummets to <1% and sometimes even lower.
Cross-border potential
In the first section, we spoke briefly about how a business can integrate a fiat processing gateway to achieve instant fiat-fiat conversions. Of course, in this way, a company is able to accept any currency through a service such as Stripe, where the currency received is automatically converted into the currency needed.
However, there’s a catch. Stripe charges a 2% fee if a currency conversion is required. This is on-top of the service’s currency processing fee. So, while it is easy to automatically accept 180 different currencies through a service such as stripe, it’s quite expensive to do. It will also take a while to process – through Visa, large international transactions can take up to 5 working days to process.
This could explain why Checkout.com’s State of Crypto Report points out that 77% of merchants who integrate a crypto payment processing service witnessed an uptick in cross-border transactions. However, they aren’t the only explanations for such a figure. By offering crypto as a payment option, a business will naturally be more appealing on the international stage as a modern, forward-thinking company.
Moreover, a distinct advantage of crypto is that a business may capitalise on new international employees as well as customers. Companies usually find it expensive to hire internationally-based teams – partly because trying to translate payment from the local currency to the employee’s currency is a frustrating and expensive process. Moreover, depending on how crypto is taxed in the countries in which you operate, you could offer tax-efficient salary options to your employees. As an example, in the US, crypto is still classed as property, meaning that tax liabilities fall under Capital Gains. Therefore, partial payment in crypto can actually reduce the amount of tax paid for customers in high-income tax brackets.
These could be key factors in the decision making of your future employees, increasing your company’s worldwide reputation. It’s not looking great for fiat.
Customer conversion
Specifically when it comes to e-commerce businesses, cart abandonment is a major problem. This refers to the number of online visitors that add an item to their cart and then leave the site before making a purchase. Research shows that for multi-brand retail, almost 80 percent of online visitors drop off before making a purchase.
Fiat payment gateways are constantly looking at ways of minimising this statistic, by attempting to speed up their processing times and increasing transaction approval rates. However, the problem seems to be a bit deeper, and perhaps even fiat-specific.
According to the Baymard Institute survey, a leading factor in customer drop-off is consumers not having vital information before checkout – such as extra shipping fees and additional taxes. A whopping 48% of visitors dropping off at this stage did so because the extra costs were too high.
Extra fees such as taxes, can be discounted through the use of a crypto payment gateway, while lower overheads can cut fees for the merchant. This means the overall price of goods can be placed lower when crypto is used as the payment medium – a distinct advantage for crypto-inclined merchants over fiat-only traditionalists.
Final thoughts
If you’re looking to accept payments in cryptocurrency – we don’t blame you. The benefits over fiat are vast, from capitalising on lower fees and a removal of friendly fraud to greater security and increased market penetration.
In terms of choosing the right provider, CryptoProcessing is a safe choice. The company is a EU-licenced crypto processor, allowing merchants to accept crypto legally and securely. It also offers multiple payment options to fit any business model. From E-commerce to Gaming, the flexibility boasted by the platform makes the integration procedure feel like that of getting a bespoke suit.
