While people continue to doubt the validity of cryptocurrencies and debate their place in future world economies, some organizations have opted out of the arguments altogether. Instead, they have decided to capitalize on the benefits of using cryptocurrencies as a payment option.
This article will highlight some of the benefits of using cryptocurrencies as a payment option. The goal is to help you understand what organizations and individuals stand to gain by accepting and using cryptocurrencies.
1. Cheap instant worldwide payments
Making international payments can be a long and painstaking process. You often have to check whether the organization you want to send money to has any online payment options you can use.
In most cases, you have to account for expensive cross-border transactions fees that will often accompany your payment. With cryptocurrencies, that is not a problem.
Let’s say you go to the jackpot casino login page and find that they accept cryptocurrency payments. If you have a cryptocurrency wallet, all you need to do is find the casino’s wallet’s address, and you can transfer the money to them directly. In most cases, your highest cost may only be that of transferring money from your bank to your cryptocurrency wallet.
This is great for both businesses and organizations because they can interact and exchange products/services for money regardless of their geographical differences.
2. Cryptocurrencies give users autonomy.
Generally, a bank acts as an intermediary between you and your money. If you visit your favorite store and want to buy something with your debit card, the bank has to authorize the payment for you. Additionally, they may often charge you some form of the transaction fee, and in some cases, they may refuse to authorize the transaction. Many people who argue for the adoption of cryptocurrencies cite this as the most significant reason.
They argue that banks do not allow people autonomy over their own money. Instead, they stand in the way. With cryptocurrencies, you have complete autonomy over your money. Once your money is in your crypto-wallet, you have complete control over what you do with it without having to ask anyone for ‘permission’ to use it.
How do cryptocurrencies grant autonomy?
One of the biggest questions people have when they hear about autonomy is who keeps the records? After all, banks serve a purpose. They ensure that a person only uses the money they have, keep detailed records of transactions in a ledger-like manner to maintain balance, and give out loans with interest to earn you profit.
With cryptocurrencies, blockchain technology is what deals with ‘record keeping’. All transactions are recorded in a block on the blockchain, and these records are distributed to everyone on the network.
In this way, the system becomes trustless, as everyone has a record of all the transactions. This trustlessness facilitates autonomy, as there does not need to be one central financial body regulating transactions and keeping records.
3. Banking for the unbanked
Data published by the World Bank from 2017 suggested that 1.7 billion adults around the world are unbanked. These are individuals that do not have any accounts with financial institutions. Many of these people can comfortably live like that if they have no interactions with eCommerce, but that is harder now than in the past.
So what does a person who does not trust financial institutions do when they want to pay for products or services offered by an online business? They can opt to use cryptocurrencies.
This builds on the idea of having autonomy over your money. Suppose you find a way to open a cryptocurrency wallet and deposit money into it without a bank (these options exist). In that case, you can participate in ecommerce services without using a bank or other traditional financial institutions.
Of course, the most significant deterrent here is that many businesses still do not accept cryptocurrency payments. Yet as time passes, more businesses are opening up to that possibility, so the unbanked will continue getting access to more and more businesses as time passes.
4. Discretion and confidentiality
Discretion refers to keeping something a secret from specified people, and cryptocurrencies allow their users discretion. Let’s look at a scenario. A married couple has a joint bank account on which all their transactions are shared.
One partner wants to buy their partner a gift but does not want it to reflect on their joint account, as it would ruin the surprise. If the partner owns a cryptocurrency wallet, they can easily buy their partner the gift while still keeping them out of the loop.
Confidentiality, on the other hand, refers to keeping information a secret. When it comes to cryptocurrencies, the level of confidentiality varies.
Most cryptocurrencies encrypt users’ information in the blockchain, so it is not easy to track them. Yet, it would not be impossible to decrypt this information with some time and resources and trace it back to the users with some time and resources.
However, some cryptocurrencies take the issue of anonymity very seriously. Networks like Monero and the Lightning Network are anonymity-based and emphasize keeping their users safe and unknown.
Depending on what transactions people want to make and how confidential they want their data to be kept, cryptocurrencies ensure confidentiality and discretion not possible with banks.
Final Verdict
Whether you trust cryptocurrencies or not, they are here to stay for now. The four advantages outlined in this article should help you understand in part why some people are choosing to make cryptocurrency payments and why more and more organizations are accepting crypto payments.