Crypto Payments Becoming More Mainstream For Retailers

NFTs, the metaverse, cryptocurrency - it’s a new world for retailers, and all in its early stages. Innovative, large luxury brands have been making experiments in this space over the last year, including NFTs for digital clothing and art, and fully-immersive digital worlds in the metaverse on platforms like Decentraland and Roblox. Gucci, which was an early adopter of this Web3 tech, announced this week that they will be accepting payments in crypto - in their physical stores.

Building out your entire retail presence in the metaverse or issuing NFTs can be a lot of work. But even for smaller businesses, crypto is easier. With the right POS system, accepting crypto can be simple. There are still considerations you’ll have to make like which coins to accept - you might want to standardize on Bitcoin, or choose a platform that supports multiple forms of cryptocurrency. (For example, Gucci will accept more than 10 currencies, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Wrapped Bitcoin, Litecoin, Shiba Inu and five stablecoins, while another luxury retailer, Off-White, started accepting crypto payments last month in Bitcoin, Ethereum, Binance Coin, Ripple, and stablecoins Tether and USD Coin). And you’ll need to choose how to process returns, for example, if you need to manage the volatility in crypto by offering returns in store credit only or whether to process the returns in the same coin used to purchase. 

At BeLocal, we help businesses of all sizes manage their location-based marketing and presence in directories like Google Maps. Offering crypto payments may become a differentiator for local search rankings for some of your customers - we can help you choose the right POS to easily accept crypto and integrate this messaging into your local presence. Contact us <link> to learn more.