Legacy credit card payment facilities like Visa are starting to disappoint retailers with their excessively high fees, opening the door for cryptocurrency to drop in like a bolt of lightning. And this is precisely what’s happening. Although we are still very early in the first stage of adoption, it looks like the long dreamed of day when you can buy a cup of coffee with bitcoin is actually arriving.
Mainstream media may criticise bitcoin as a means of payment, but stats released by payment processor BitPay reported that cryptocurrency payments actually grew last year. A record $1 billion in transaction revenue was recorded, an increase of 255% compared to 2017. Add to that the increased crypto transactions in economically unstable countries like Venezuela and you have the signs of practical use case scenarios arising globally. Necessity is the mother of invention, and as Venezuela and Zimbabwe see hyperinflation eating into the fiat of locals there, people are turning more and more to Bitcoin and Dash to escape their worthless fiat.
As for that cup of coffee, Starbucks – the biggest name in retail coffee in the world – is leading the way with its recent interest in facilitating bitcoin payment for its customers via the new Lightning Network payment channel. And other companies like Kroger in America and Rakuten in Japan are jumping on board too. As mainstream credit card companies like Visa corner the market and take liberties with their excessive fees, they are simply pushing away business from top retailers. This is how the market sorts itself out, how the playing field is evened out by healthy competition, and bitcoin can really capitalize in times like these.
A few big global names adopting bitcoin payment facilities like this could really set the ball rolling and lead to a tipping point toward widespread adoption at last.
That being said, it may take more than a few isolated cases like this before we really see bitcoin as an everyday payment facility but at least we are heading in the right direction. Also the actual payment interface needs to be improved and made more user-friendly. It needs to be easy enough for a non-technically minded person to use, like your grandma, for example. We have to think of the average person in the street and aim at their level, which is certainly possible. Just recently, earlier this month supermarket giant Kroger announced that they will stop accepting Visa credit card payments at their over 250 stores.
This is a huge step for the 17th biggest company in the US. And this is what we need to see. These corporate monopolies who dominate the market and force out the smaller players are unfair and exploitative in their business models sometimes, extorting more out of the customer than we can tolerate. And as a result the customer pushes back and votes with their wallet, simply going elsewhere to do business.
That is the positive potential of healthy market capitalism in a free market economy.
It was at this announcement that leading bitcoin executive Anthony Pompliano approached Kroger and offered them the opportunity to use the services of his company Morgan Creek Digital and their Lightning Network payment system. The “Pomp” as he is fondly known, is a regular writer and commentator on bitcoin in the community. He has now made the offer and we shall await the outcome, but if huge companies like Kroger also jump on board with accepting bitcoin payments then this could really be the watershed moment where 2019 become the year in which bitcoin becames a household payment option.
It’s inevitable and only a matter of time.
There certainly is an interest among large retailers for an alternative payment method. The world is moving away from cash and using credit and debit cards – which are basically digital money – more and more. Some Scandinavian countries are almost entirely cashless already. As Mastercard and Visa price themselves out of the market, other new players in the industry like crypto payment processor CoinGate could definitely jump in and fill the gap. The challenge is that adoption requires a two-sided approach. Both the retailers and the customers need to get on board from their respective sides of the coin, so to speak.
So adoption may take a while longer.
Retailers are certainly interested in alternatives to the dominant payment companies and that’s where CoinGate and BitPay come in as crypto payment service providers, particularly if they can undercut the high fees of older monopolies. Starbucks will certainly be ahead of the curve, as they begin accepting bitcoin payments at their US outlets by the end of 2019. They have already signed a deal with Bakkt, the cryptocurrency payment platform and exchange due to be launched by ICE the operator of the New York Stock Exchange. So it can’t get more mainstream than that. It’s not long now before you can get that fabled coffee for your bitcoin, thanks to the micropayment facility of Lightning Network, where even the fraction of a bitcoin, known as a Satoshi, is even further divided up into Millisatoshis. Would you like milk and sugar with that?
Other large retail outlets to also adopt the Lightning Network bitcoin payment method include Birks Group, one of Canada's largest and oldest jewelery retailers. Eight of their 30 stores are now accepting payment in bitcoin. Besides that Rakuten, Japan’s largest e-commerce website, has added support for cryptocurrency payments. Japan is a world leader in crypto adoption. Overall the amount of companies beginning to use crypto facilities for their customers is small but considering they are such sizable companies, it really sets the trend and may even encourage their competitors to do likewise to keep abreast of the trend.
And in this way the snowball effect can take place, rolling all the way into every household in the land.
We just have to sort out the initial teething problems, like the chicken and egg dilemma of why should retailers adopt bitcoin payment facilities if not many customers are using bitcoin, and how do customers adopt it if not many retailers are accepting it? It needs a critical mass of users to reach a tipping point. And cash is still popular in most nations…for now, though that may be changing. Only 5% of Americans own any cryptocurrency, which shows you what a minority we are, despite our passion and enthusiasm in the crypto industry.
That may also change when giants like Facebook and Whatsapp start adopting digital currencies of their own.
Besides that, the Lightning Network itself is still only in Beta phase, and is not fully ready yet for large scale deployment. It needs to be simple to use and more streamlined to facilitate mass adoption. Then it will be the ideal perfect solution to crypto use and adoption as an actual means of trade and not just a store of value. Lightning Network was only conceived of in 2016 and its beta phase was only released in the past year, so although it has already come a long way, it still needs to overcome the major barriers of consumer-friendly and convenient interface at point-of-sale.
Then its technological capacity should easily be able to handle the volumes that Visa and Mastercard currently experience. So watch this space.
We have only just begun.