75% of customers and 60% of merchants are interested in adopting crypto for payments, a new study shows

Key Points

• Consumer and merchants are eager to adopt crypto for payments
• 75% of customers want to shop with crypto
• 60% of merchants want to accept crypto as a payment means within 2022 compared with only 4% of merchants that currently accept crypto payments
• Crypto adoption continues to grow.

Over the past two years, institutional support for bitcoin has led to mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency as banks and large financial institutions pour billions of dollars flow into the crypto space. But support for cryptocurrency is not only coming from big companies, consumers and merchants alike say they’re interested in adopting crypto for payments, according to a recent study conducted by crypto exchange Crypto.com in collaboration with Worldpay.

The study revealed that 75% of their customers want to purchase goods and services using cryptocurrencies. The study also found that 60% of merchants want to accept crypto as a means of payment in the coming year compared with only 4% of merchants that currently accept crypto payments.

Both Consumers and Merchants are Eager to Adopt Crypto as Payments

The survey was carried out in the fourth quarter of 2021. As part of the study, they surveyed over 110,000 Crypto.com users and Worldpay from FIS’ base of approximately 1.5 million merchants. The majority of the customers interviewed were under 40-year-olds while the merchant largely came from digital media and gaming.

The final report, which was released in February 2022, found that “the appetite for spending and accepting crypto payments is large. This joint report gives insights into customer and merchant demand by industry.” The report examined several key aspects of the crypto market, including interest, payment mediums, and the growth of crypto as a payment medium.

A great opportunity for merchants to meet customers’ desire to spend

Although most major industries have a certain level of appetite to accept cryptocurrency as payment, the report found that retail and luxury goods businesses lead in the desire to accept crypto. However, customer preferences are more evenly distributed across industries. The findings further confirm the customers’ desire to use cryptocurrency as a general payment method both online and in-store.

“Customer demand to spend crypto currently outweighs that of merchants to accept. Because of this, 64% of Crypto.com’s customers are using a prepaid card to spend their holdings at businesses that do not support a direct wallet transfer. There is a clear opportunity for merchants to capture, while also increasing the desire of customers to spend. However, a lack of education and cross stakeholder coordination is dictating the pace at which merchants adopt this technology,” the report reads.

The full report can be downloaded here.

We’ve been covering the crypto exchange startup since its inception in 2016. Crypto.com currently serves over 10 million customers with the world’s fastest-growing cryptocurrency and financial services platform. Crypto.com is a pioneer of payments and cryptocurrency with a mission to accelerate the world’s transition to cryptocurrency.

The startup is working towards this goal with its portfolio of consumer products, including the Crypto.com Wallet & Card App, the MCO Visa Card, Crypto Invest, Crypto.com Chain, as well as Crypto Credit. Crypto.com is also the first cryptocurrency company in the world to have ISO/IEC 27701:2019, ISO27001:2013 and PCI: DSS 3.2.1, Level 1 compliance, and independently assessed at Tier 4, the highest level for both NIST Cybersecurity and Privacy Frameworks, as well as Service Organization Control (SOC) 2 compliance.