Retail is not something that you can just break into — at least not traditional retail. You need to buy inventory from a bulk supplier, buy a warehouse to store that inventory, and then you need to purchase a store front with employees to sell the inventory.

If it sounds like a lot, it’s because it is. That’s why traditional retail has a high barrier to enter and is dominated by popular brands. Think of your Target, Walmart or grocery store that services to thousands of people in all sorts of locations. Truth be told, starting a retail store is not cheap, and it’s not easy.

Thankfully, with the emergence of the internet, it has allowed for the creation of a new type of retail stores, one that’s completely digital. A retail store where the owner doesn’t hold any of the inventory. This type of store has been dubbed dropshipping.

Dropshipping is unique, the owner of this type of e-commerce website never holds any of the inventory. A typical dropshipping business works like this: a $200 item from the dropshipping website is purchased. The dropshipper then goes and purchases the ordered item from the manufactures website for $150. Then the manufacture ships the item to the person who ordered it and the dropshipper profits $50.

Of course this is a simplified version of the process, but nonetheless a correct one. Dropshippers save consumers time, they find the item and create a website for it and various other products that fall under the same category. Be it watches, sunglasses, or even dropshipping lawnmowers.

Although there is no exact figure on how much these stores gross. In 2017 alone e-commerce stores in North America accounted for 660.4 billion dollars. Clearly online shopping is being common practice in North America and globally.

Dropshippers are always looking for ways to cut costs, rather it be on shipping or decreasing returns to save money. However, most dropshippers use a payment processor to accept government issued currencies. PayPal for example charges a flat-rate of 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction.

However, what if these companies were to switch to accepting Bitcoin? Or any digital currency for that matter. They’d save an astronomical amount of money per year. Not only would they save a good chunk of their profit, it would also allow them to cut out the banks.

Imagine, having no inventory, no warehouse, no employees, and now with digital currencies no bank or payment processor involved taking a slice of the pie either.

In addition to Bitcoin preventing banks and payment fees to bite away at the profit margin, accepting Bitcoin offers other attractive benefits. There is seamless global payments that avoid any currency exchange rates which allows the e-commerce website to keep a larger profit. Furthermore, Bitcoin prevents chargebacks from customers making it unable to scam the company.

Given the growing price of Bitcoin, and the cheaper fees various stores offer a discount for paying over the blockchain which is both a benefit to the consumer as it is the business.

To learn how you could accept Bitcoin your pre-existing e-commerce website or your new dropshipping website that’s been inspired from this article head over to Blockonomics to learn more!