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June 13, 2022 • Issue 22:06:01
Crypto payment acceptance

today – Part 1

incorporate to enhance your offerings? If so, what do
Advisory Boar d you envision?
Advisory Board
5. Do you think crypto payments will bring us closer
to a cashless society? Why or why not?

This article shares responses from a portion of
Advisory Board members. Further insights will be
published in our June 27, 2022, issue.
Steve Peisner
Acqupay

rom small merchant businesses to the command- Please allow me to answer your questions with a little bit of
ing card brands, awareness of cryptocurrency in merchant processing and business history. Assuming the
payments is high, implementation at the POS has past is the precursor of the future, we need to jump back
F been rising, and only a small percentage of mer- before we can long-jump forward.
chants surveyed recently indicated they see no need to ever
accept cryptocurrency payments. Having been actively involved in the bankcard industry for
37 years, I have seen a thing or two (or 10 or 20, hundreds
However, extreme volatility has lowered the value of some actually) changes during my tenure. I would say one of the
cryptocurrencies and erased the value of others such as biggest and first major changes was the then "card asso-
Luna, the Terra ecosystem's stablecoin. This situation is ciations" (Mastercard and Visa) adding a $0.10 per transac-
steering many individuals and businesses away from tion fee to every transaction. We went nuts as we thought
cryptocurrency payments. With that in mind, we asked it would make it harder for us (salespeople) to make a sale.
The Green Sheet Advisory Board members the following Long story short: it didn't, and we figured out a way to in-
questions: corporate it into our presentation, and we kept selling.

1. Have you added or are you adding cryptocurrency Let's talk about those merchants that "see no need to ever
acceptance to your suite of offerings, or are you waiting accept cryptocurrency payments." Back in the mid/late 80's
until demand increases and/or extreme volatility is when I was walking the pavement, I had an appointment
brought under control? Please elaborate. with a local movie theater in Tarzana, Calif.
2. What type of crypto payments do you see working
best for your merchants? Native e-wallets that bypass
the card brand rails? Visa- and Mastercard-branded Contributed articles inside by:
crypto payment cards? Something else?
Kristin Gjerding .....................................................................................18
3. What challenges have you, or do you expect you Natasa Cvijanovic .................................................................................30
would encounter when incorporating cryptopayments
into your established products and services? What Elie Y. Katz ...............................................................................................32
solutions have you found or would you try?
Dirk Izzo ...................................................................................................33
4. Do you see additional complementary products
based on distributed ledger technology that you could
Continued on page 26