What made few merchants ignore the cryptocurrency payment hype?
Cryptocurrencies will probably have a great impact on payment processing at some point in the future, but in the present, we can be confident that there is no enough demand to explain taking on the added complexity and the risk of accepting them.
In research, it has been found that some Bitcoin exchanges are looking for traditional payment processing for credit cards, so their consumers can purchase cryptocurrency using MasterCard or Visa.
The adoption of cryptocurrency will be on hold until the Federal government develops guidance regulations for virtual currencies. At this time, some countries do not recognize cryptocurrencies as legal tender.
Now let’s focus on some of the issues that created an inconvenience situation for merchants to adopt cryptocurrency payments gateways.
Lack of knowledge in understanding the technologyThere is still a lack of knowledge among the people on how the distributed ledger technology works except some of the developers and blockchain believers. A majority of merchants don’t understand the mechanism of blockchain technology, which made them ignore the cryptocurrency payment gateway method.
Price volatilityIt is known that the crypto market place is quite volatile, which makes it difficult to establish a proper valuation for currency in exchange for goods. The crypto market has a great tendency to fluctuate between high and low.
This has become uncertain for merchants because if they accept one price for a product in the morning, then the currency value will drop dramatically before the end of the day.
Long processing timeUnlike traditional credit card transactions, transaction processing using cryptocurrencies takes time. Transaction time will vary depending upon the currencies used and the network that is being processed.
As of now, crypto settlements may take up to 30 minutes or even higher if there is a large volume of Bitcoin transactions in a particular network.
Instability of crypto coinsAs cryptocurrencies are new, the digital market has yet to establish which one will eventually win over the market space. The volatility of different coins and the addition of new one’s have a bigger impact on the market fluctuations.
To sum upUntil now, the traditional payment methods of credit cards and debit cards remain the primary ways of a customer to purchase goods and services from Merchants. If the market demands the acceptance of cryptocurrencies worldwide, then the merchant and the payment processor will act accordingly.