The world of retail is changing at a rapid pace. The unstable economy paired with the Covid-related lockdowns has caused most retailers to move their operations primarily online, coming up with creative models to somehow imitate the traditional customer journey.
At the same time, Bitcoin is being seen as a safe-haven against a potential economic collapse. An increased number of companies choose to buy Bitcoin with their cash reserves while the spark of interest reaches individual investors as well. After being presumed dead by multiple reliable publications, Bitcoin is back in the spotlight once again.
In this short article, we talk about the present and future of retail stores and how Bitcoin can help the industry expedite towards better customer solutions.
The Current Struggles Of Retail Stores And How Bitcoin Solves Them
E-commerce and the retail industry overall have certain limitations. These have caused headaches to business owners, suppliers, and customers all over the world. Let’s point out the most obvious, and illustrate how Bitcoin can improve these systemic processes.
- Suppliers and merchants struggle with payments, especially when made overseas – When a retail store chooses to import goods (the majority nowadays), several points in the process are both risky and costly. Taxes that enter a foreign country are usually taxes for a variety of reasons and payments take a long time to clear. Sometimes, suppliers have to wait up to a month to receive a payment. Bitcoin resolves this thanks to instant transactions, all over the world, with nearly zero fees.
- Hybrid businesses can adapt, traditional business models suffer – For retail stores that did not have an online presence before, the pandemic-related shift can cause many new struggles and irritations. Among them is also the ability to attract customers and improve their online brand presence. Thankfully, when choosing to accept Bitcoin payments using dedicated widgets, these stores are found and placed in lists with other companies that accept Bitcoin. This allows more people to find the store, creating promotional opportunities at no added cost.
- Customers need more payment options – There are hundreds of millions of unbanked people in the world today. Aside from that, there is a large share of people that does not use online payment systems to make transactions. For these people, Bitcoin could offer a reliable solution, which in turn increases the revenue potential of retail stores.
How To Start Accepting Bitcoin
Retail stores that choose to accept Bitcoin can do so very easily. The process has just a few steps to follow, and many e-commerce builders (like Shopify) offer integrations to help you go through the process without any struggle.
1st Step: Make sure you are online – If your store is not yet online, it is the most important priority to attend. With more lockdowns ahead of us, chances are that the only stores that will continue to operate will do so from their online platforms.
2nd Step: Add a Bitcoin payment plugin to your website – These can be found by several sources, such as Coinbase Commerce, BitPay, or CoinGate. In most cases, you will be able to use the widget for free and only pay a small commission when a transaction is made.
3rd Step: Stay open to direct Bitcoin payments too – If you also wish to accept Bitcoin directly, without exchanging it to USD or any other traditional currency, you can create a personal BTC wallet and place the QR code at the point of checkout. This is less common among merchants but still a great idea at this point.
4rth Step: That’s it – You are now ready to start accepting Bitcoin payments for your products and services. From this point onwards, you can explore the different ways in which you can promote your store to the Bitcoin crowd.
A Peek Into The Future
As Bitcoin continues to grow in popularity and usability, more people will choose it over traditional payment methods. As the user base increases, we expect it to become one of the primary methods to conduct online transactions, including those made when interacting with retail stores.
While it is still early to make guesses, we can definitely see this process becoming more popular in the short-term future. This is especially true for the next 12 to 18 months, where Bitcoin is expected to see a massive increase in its price due to the economic instabilities of our times.
Overall, it’s best to conduct some further research on the popular digital currency and see how it could help you increase your chances of success for your online business. And once you do that, make sure to also check BTC’s potential as a long term investment, much like many other public companies are already doing.
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