According to the findings, more than one-third (35%) of tech-savvy consumers favor shops that accept cryptocurrency, with 26% indicating they would even switch merchants to shop where crypto is accepted. Similarly, nearly one-quarter of all everyday shoppers (23%) favor retailers who take cryptocurrency.
As more customers use digital wallets and businesses accept them, the moment has come for cryptocurrency payments to be widely accepted as a vital component of the global payment solution ecosystem.
Stephen Pair, CEO of crypto processing platform BitPay, will speak about where he sees blockchain-based payments heading in the future and how the firm is supporting merchants and customers by introducing additional altcoin alternatives such as litecoin.
In July 2021, BitPay began accepting the litecoin cryptocurrency. Since then, the firm has completed over 200,000 litecoin transactions worth over $35 million through its partner merchant network.
“Most shops would want to accept all payment methods,” Pair noted. The same holds true for their customers. “The [litecoin] community has been quite supportive, and they’re using it to buy things. They are drawn to the companies on our website and frequently become clients.”
In less than a year and a half, litecoin has climbed through the payment ranks to become BitPay’s second most popular crypto-based transaction currency, accounting for 27% of all merchant purchases, following only bitcoin (41%).
Litecoin, which was introduced in 2011, has certain advantages over its more well-known older sister, bitcoin. Litecoin transactions often settle faster than bitcoin transactions and cost only a penny, compared to 30 cents for bitcoin transactions.
“While bitcoin may be used for larger purchases of luxury items, we find litecoin users utilizing it for more everyday payments, smaller, regularly repeating transactions of only a few hundred dollars,” Pair noted.
The difference between the two coins’ use cases, he noted, is less about the token’s cost and more about the fact that bitcoin’s larger network and underlying mining power may make users more comfortable using it to acquire more expensive things, such as a car or a designer handbag.
