A survey that was conducted from December 3 until December 16, 2021, by Deloitte in collaboration with PayPal, shows that almost 75% of retailers are planning to accept bitcoin and crypto as payments.
This is in regard to the sample data that they gathered from 2,000 senior executives at retail organizations in the United States. The survey concentrated on businesses that are making annual revenues ranging from $10 million to $500 million and above.
Deloitte stated that overall they found that these merchants are willing to meet their customers’ needs and expectations to adapt digital currency payments. However, there are things that need to be considered such as infrastructure decisions, security, and the development of a regulatory framework.
Furthermore, Deloitte found that although these merchants are willing to accept cryptocurrencies like bitcoin as payments, 50% said that they will utilize third-party payment processors and convert the digital currency into fiat.
This means, they are not planning to keep the cryptocurrency. With how volatile the bitcoin price currently still is (a good example would be the recent crash), this strategy is viewed as less risky by many retailers than if they didn’t convert to fiat or a stablecoin.
Merchants also recognize the challenges ahead of the project. The data shows that these merchants view the complexity of integrating digital currencies with existing financial infrastructure as a leading problem. Alongside that, they are also looking into the complexity of integration across various digital currencies, lack of leadership support, no clear return of investments (ROI), lack of budget, security of the payments platform, changing regulatory landscape, and instability of the digital currency market as things that will affect how smooth the transaction between them and their customers will be when using bitcoin or crypto payments.
The reason these merchants are looking to accept bitcoin is because they expect increased customer interest in using bitcoin and crypto as a method of payment in the coming years.
