According to the research, more than one-third (35%) of tech-savvy consumers prefer stores that take cryptocurrencies, with 26% saying they would even transfer merchants to one that accepts cryptocurrency. Similarly, over a quarter (23%) of all everyday buyers choose stores which accept cryptocurrencies.
As more people use digital wallets and companies accept them, the time has come for cryptocurrency payments to be broadly acknowledged as an important component of the global payment solution ecosystem.
Stephen Pair, CEO of crypto processing platform BitPay, will discuss where he sees blockchain-based payments going in the future and how the company is assisting merchants and customers by adding new altcoins 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.
“The majority of merchants would prefer to accept all payment methods,” Pair added. The same is true for their clients. “The [litecoin] community has been incredibly supportive, they’re buying stuff with it. They pay close attention to the businesses on our site and frequently become customers.”
In less than a year and a half, litecoin has risen through the payment ranks to become BitPay’s second most popular currency for crypto-based transactions, accounting for 27% of all merchant purchases, trailing only bitcoin (41%).
Litecoin, which was launched in 2011, has some benefits over bitcoin, its more well-known older sibling. Litecoin transactions often settle faster than bitcoin transactions, and the cost is only a penny, as opposed to 30 cents for bitcoin transactions.
“While someone may use bitcoin for larger purchases of luxury products, we tend to see litecoin users using it for more everyday payments, smaller, frequently repetitive transactions of only a few hundred dollars,” Pair explained.
The difference in the two coins’ use cases, he continued, is less about the token’s pricing and more about the fact that bitcoin’s larger network and underlying mining power may make customers more comfortable using it to purchase greater priced products, such as a vehicle or a designer handbag.
