Visa Inc, the world’s largest payment firm, has polled 2,250 small companies in nine countries to see if they plan to accept cryptocurrency payments.
According to Reuters, Visa expects numerous retail enterprises to join the cryptocurrency boom this year. The payment business has long been active in the cryptocurrency market and sees widespread acceptance as a way to expand its own product and service offerings.
Visa presently offers cryptocurrency-linked cards to customers who want to use digital currencies to make purchases. This service, however, does not imply that retailers would accept digital assets as payment. As they pay, the user’s assets are promptly converted into fiat cash “behind the scenes.”
Despite the fact that Visa customers are apparently adopting cryptocurrency, with over $3.5 billion in crypto-linked digital transactions expected in 2021, retailers have remained wary of accepting it as payment.
The Results of Visa’s Crypto Survey
Small companies in the US, Brazil, Singapore, Canada, Russia, the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, Germany, and Ireland were polled by Visa. Small companies in North America, according to reports, were the least excited about accepting cryptocurrency as a means of payment. This year, 19 percent of small companies in the United States and just 8% in Canada wish to accept digital currencies as a means of payment.
However, in 2022, over 30% of small merchants in the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Brazil –where the crypto business is booming– plan to accept crypto payments. Additionally, nearly three-quarters of the shops polled said that embracing cryptocurrency as a payment option would be “essential” to their firms’ growth.
Similarly, Stephen Pair, the CEO of crypto payments company BitPay, has made statements that support the 2022 projection for digital currency acceptance. BitPay, a firm that provides cryptocurrency payment processing services to retailers, has allegedly noticed an increase in the number of businesses using its services to accept digital currencies directly as payment.
“There might be an inflexion point around 2022′′ for the widespread usage of digital currency, according to Pair, “when it starts to become a bit uncommon for you not to have any.” He made the following observations:
“I think in 2022, you’ll see many more people — that next wave of people — getting interested in crypto both from an investment perspective and a ‘let’s try it for a payment’ [perspective]…There’s going to be many more places with that service — that you’ll be able to spend crypto and do it in an in-person setting, which may make people more comfortable trying it out than perhaps if it’s on a website where they’re not sure if they’re doing it right or wrong.”
