Mass Adoption and Cryptocurrency Usage
Most experts agree that paying at grocery with cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin will only grow more popular as more and more consumers, the majority of them younger, start using this form of payment in all aspects of their lives. What happens, though, when an entire nation decides to go digital with its currency? As might be imagined, this move is beneficial to a cryptocurrency’s stability and its ultimate use by merchant and shoppers.
“Mass adoption occurs when a country’s government adopts an electronic version of the local currency — for the U.S., a digital version of the U.S. dollar,” explains Peter Jensen, CEO of San Francisco-based RocketFuel, whose partnership with global payment solutions provider ACI enables grocers to accept a variety of crypto coins and accommodate various crypto wallets. “This is what China did more than one year ago, what India did [recently], and what many smaller countries have done, [such as] El Salvador. Because the digital version is tied to the physical version, there is no volatility, and the fact that the government is behind it validates the initiative, instills trust among consumers and businesses, and accelerates adoption. I was in El Salvador twice [lately], and it’s amazing to see the adoption among businesses within the six months since the law was adopted.”
Will the United States switch to crypto as its official currency? Probably not any time soon, but Jensen is still bullish on the possibilities of this method of payment, which he believes will eventually overtake credit card transactions in a few years, due to credit’s “high amount of fraud,” as well as the “[m]any different intermediaries that get a piece of the pie [and] contribute to [its] high costs.”
As Jensen puts it: “Crypto is yet another example of a new technology that is more efficient and replaces and consolidates the intermediaries. A good comparison is how ridesharing technology with Uber and Lyft overtook the usage of regular taxis, drove costs down and increased inefficiencies.”
For more expert advice about what grocers should consider when deciding to accept crypto payments, click here.
