By
Steve Muchoki
April 19th, 2024
A recent report indicates that many businesses and individuals have understood the convenience of using crypto as a medium of payment.
Crypto has since its inception evolved into a more powerful financial and payment tool which according to Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, is often underrated compared to fiat. In a Twitter comment on August 24, Buterin explained that crypto is not only resistant to censorship, but provides the utmost convenience which is superior to other currencies in terms of international businesses, charities, and payments within countries.
“People continue to underrate how often cryptocurrency payments are superior not even because of censorship resistance but just because they’re so much more convenient. Big boost to international business and charity, and sometimes even payments within countries,” he said.
Fiat currency is often criticized for its long processing time and high transaction fees which do not favor international transfers and charitable donations. Just recently, $54 million was raised by activist groups and non-profit organizations for Ukraine. Most of the donations were in cryptos.
A recent report indicates that many businesses and individuals have understood the convenience of using crypto as a medium of payment. Data platform, PYMNTS released a report in July titled “Paying With Cryptocurrency”.
The report took into account the perception of businesses whose annual income exceeds $1 billion. As part of its findings, 85% of the respondents admitted that they are adopting crypto payments to find and gain new customers.
Also, Binance’s recent partnership with Mastercard to provide prepaid cards for Argentinians discloses the global acceptance of crypto debit cards. It is important to note that Wirex rewards customers with crypto cashback for paying through the card. The reward is also applied to those who spend various cryptos, fiat, and withdraw from ATMs.
Regardless of its merits, the price volatility, high transaction fees, ease of use, regulatory risk, and long processing time for some cryptos including BTC and ETH have been a concern. The average fee of a Bitcoin transaction is $0.819, and its blockchain handles five Transactions Per Second. Ethereum also charges an average transaction fee of $1.57 with 29.3 Transaction Per Second. The Ethereum transaction fees and the processing time is expected to be drastically reduced by the introduction of layer-2 roll-up technology, such as ZK-rollups. Bitcoin is also expected to be better with the development of the lightning network.