Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, blockchain — the talk is everywhere, and it’s growing louder by the day. More and more individuals and businesses are investing in cryptocurrency as a means of decentralizing currency and encouraging peer-to-peer transactions — meaning money stays in your hands rather than being funneled through banks and other financial institutions.

Major companies like Starbucks, Overstock, Expedia, and Microsoft are on board with cryptocurrency payments, and they’re using them successfully — even if you’re a smaller business with an eCommerce store, it is possible to utilize cryptocurrency payments to help increase your sales. Let’s take a look at how, and why, offering your customers this option can boost your bottom line.

Improving Your Customer’s Experience

The best kind of customer experience is one which goes smoothly and offers the customer precisely what they want. There are increasing numbers of cryptocurrency users (currently there are around 32 million Bitcoin wallets) who aren’t all focused on investing or hodling, but who want to use their crypto to make purchases.

Giving your customers the option to make purchases via Bitcoin, Commercium, or other kinds of cryptocurrency exposes your business to a global market — and a more significant customer base means the potential for more sales. Providing a payment service which caters to more customers also encourages repeat business.

Global Customers = Global Transactions

Standard international payments can take anywhere from 1 to 4 business days to be completed, largely due to the fraud prevention policies and checks traditional financial institutions have in place. Cryptocurrency payments break down borders — enabling you to settle international transactions in minutes, with purchases settled the same day.

Removing the time barriers is something cryptocurrency excels at — and crypto can help with reducing your payment costs, too. A standard credit card payment can cost you, the merchant, anywhere between 2–4% for processing fees. Payment via Bitcoin, for example, has a low, flat-rate fee — it isn’t a percentage of the total, meaning less out of pocket for you, on average. That flat rate occurs regardless of where the payment was made and where it’s received.

Faster, Cheaper, Safer

Payment via cryptocurrency not only benefits your growing customer base and makes sure you get your money more quickly with less expense — it’s also safer for you and your business.

One issue eCommerce struggles with is chargeback fraud — a process by which consumers secure a refund by disputing a transaction with their bank rather than with you as a merchant. The bank issues the return, and you are stuck absorbing the costs. Chargeback fraud is illegal but also incredibly challenging to prove, and financial institutions tend to side with the consumer over the merchant.

When a customer pays for something with cryptocurrency, the transaction is immutable — when it is recorded and approved as part of the blockchain, it cannot be changed. This protects you and your sales, eliminating chargeback fraud and making the customer come directly to you with any issues they might have.