Is cryptocurrency payment gateway a common thing, an exotic luxury, or a not-so-distant reality? Well, cryptocurrencies and blockchain or distributed ledger technologies have been around for quite a while now. However, due to high volatility, crypto remained somewhere on the verge of attention scope of investors and businesses. Until recently.
The relevance of cryptocurrency payment gateway development
Nowadays, many signs indicate that cryptocurrencies are becoming a common payment medium and investment instrument. Let us list just a few of them.
- Back in 2019, way before the pandemic-driven economic turmoil, Visa allowed transaction settlement in crypto through its Anchorage service.
- In May 2021 PayPal allowed its US customers to pay for products and services using their crypto accounts.
- Multiple decentralized finance or defi platforms and projects are rapidly developing. 221 out of 237 existing DeFi projects are built on Ethereum ecosystem. BSC (Binance Smart Chain) blockchain currently supports several dozens of DeFi apps. The most well-known examples include UniSwap, AAVE (Ethereum), Pancakeswap, Venus (BSC), and many more.
- Many large companies started accepting cryptocurrency as payment method in one format or another. Besides PayPal and Visa, they include Starbucks, Expedia, and several major airlines.
- Several new currencies, pegged to conventional currency rates, have emerged in recent years. These include USDC, USDT, BUSD, and others. Thanks to the peg, stablecoins are immune to sharp rate fluctuations. That is why they are a beneficial low-risk asset, compared to other cryptocurrencies. Also, stablecoin investments generally allow you to earn relatively high annual yield compared to conventional savings accounts.
- In June 2021 El Salvador became the first country in the world that acknowledged Bitcoin as legal tender.
All these factors speak in favor of cryptocurrency as a conventional payment medium of the present and future. That is why, development of cryptocurrency gateway solutions is a top priority for modern Paymentech companies and payment platforms.
Existing cryptocurrency payment gateway solutions: ways of improvement
Multiple cryptocurrency payment gateways have emerged in recent years. Coingate, Shopify Gateway, Coinpayments, NOWPayments, CoinsBank are just a few examples.
Most of existing crypto payment gateway solutions are focused solely on cryptocurrency payment support. Plus, many of these solutions are not yet targeted at payment facilitators. PayFacs and their sub-merchants that want to accept crypto, must go through additional background verification procedures. Even if they already submitted all the documents to accept credit card payments.
Besides crypto, merchants need to keep using traditional payment methods, such as credit, debit cards, and direct debit. So, gateway providers should enable them to accept cryptocurrency payments only in addition to conventional payment means.
The listed gaps leave plenty of space for payment technology improvement. So, gateway providers that want to add cryptocurrency support to their products, should focus on them.
Cryptocurrency payment gateway features
As we know, the key functions of a payment gateway are to ensure payment security and harmonize the formats of payment data sent from merchant or PayFac to processor. So, developers of cryptocurrency payment gateway solutions should stick to these primary functions.
Basic payment methods modern payment gateways support, include credit and debit card payments, direct debit, as well as mobile and in-app payments.
Most modern-time platforms are not ready to go through radical changes. Especially, changes required to support payment methods, for which the workflow differs significantly from basic payment handling cycle they are used to. That is why it might be difficult for them to integrate with some separate crypto payment gateway products. So, an easier option for them might be to use some omni-channel payment gateway solution. A truly omni-channel solution should support blockchain payment gateway features (besides other functions).
Conclusions
Development of cryptocurrency payment gateway solutions should be the top priority of all progressive payment gateway software companies. Becoming an open-source cryptocurrency payment processor or gateway provider is an important strategic step. It will allow your company to further diversify your revenues as cryptocurrencies gain popularity among investors, buyers, sellers, and PayFacs.
In a way, we are sharing our own recent findings and experience. United Thinkers is currently developing a cryptocurrency payment gateway solution for PayFacs and merchants. UniPay Gateway solution will initially support stablecoin payments. Bitcoin payment gateway functionality is a near-future priority. To learn more, feel free to contact our payment specialists at UniPay Gateway.
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