This morning, European cryptocurrency gateway Coingate have announced that they will be teaming up with French firm Prestashop, in a move that promises to open-up cryptocurrency payments to 80,000 Europe based merchants.
Prestashop (https://www.prestashop.com/en) is an open-source platform which allows anybody to set up an online store, the platform offers service users a full e-commerce package from providing online sales, to custom marketing and revenue expansion. In their latest move, the pairing up with Coingate, Prestashop are going to be facilitating cryptocurrency payments for the users who have stores on their platform.
The benefits of this are of course clear, not only will this provide a cheaper method for the stores to accept card payments (no admin or transaction fees), they will also revel in the promotional benefits that taking cryptocurrency payments carry. Think about if this way, if you are a shop that takes a niche form of payment, you have access to a niche market that your competitors do not have access to.
According to bitcoin.com, CEO of Coingate, Dmitrijus Borisenka has commented on the pairing, saying that:
“There is an entire new market of people who own all kinds of cryptocurrencies and are looking for ways to spend them, but the gap between customers and merchants in this sphere is still huge. It is therefore crucial to educate and encourage businesses to adopt a forward-thinking attitude and to overcome the prevailing misconceptions that surround cryptocurrencies.”
How will it work?
The Prestashop stores, or merchants will first need to set up an account with Coingate, when they do this, all the relevant software will be sent to the merchants and they will be able to start accepting cryptocurrency payments in just a few clicks. In the initial stages, Prestashop stores will support over 50 cryptocurrencies as well as standard currencies such as the Euro, the most commonly used currency within the Prestashop platform.
This is big news – Coingate already have around 50,000 users world-wide, meanwhile Prestashop provide services for over a quarter of a million stores in 200 countries. This coupling of the two platforms promises to really boost the number of people that are spending cryptocurrency online for real commodities. It’s a great leap forward in the battle for crypto adoption, giving cryptocurrency users hundreds of new ways to spend their hard earned cryptocurrency.
