Beyond Bitcoin, BitPay Sees Growth in Consumer Crypto Payments

<p>As merchants and customers gain familiarity with cryptocurrencies and the number of business applications grows, bitcoin's supremacy as the prefered payment currency erodes.</p> <p>Almost a third of payments processed by BitPay, a crypto-focused payment processor, are made using ether, stablecoins, and a handful of smaller, so-called altcoins.</p> <p>Ether currently accounts for 15% of payments made through BitPay, which offers businesses the ability to take cryptocurrencies at the point of sale, as well as a Mastercard-branded debit card that enables customers to spend a variety of cryptocurrencies at millions of retailers.</p> <p>Stablecoins such as tether, or USDT, and Circle's USD Coin, or USDC, are rapidly gaining traction, accounting for 13% of BitPay payments, Bloomberg said. The remaining 3% is made up of three minor cryptocurrencies that BitPay began accepting in 2021: early bitcoin competitor litecoin (LTC), Tesla CEO Elon Musk's favoured dogecoin, or DOGE, and its spinoff shiba inu, or SHIB.</p> <p>This is down from 92% in 2020, according to BitPay CEO Stephen Pair. He attributed some of the increase to the increasing use of stablecoins for cross-border business-to-business payments.</p> <p>That However, the use of ether, the Ethereum blockchain's cryptocurrency, has risen rapidly since 2021, when the explosion in decentralised finance, or DeFi, and new financial technologies, or NFT, initiatives boosted its profile. The majority of them are based on the Ethereum blockchain and use ether to conduct transactions. For instance, Christie's recently auctioned a $69 million NFT collage valued in ether.</p> <p>Consumption-Driven</p> <p>"Consumer choice is what motivates the boss and their desire for an omnichannel approach to payments," BitPay COO Jim Lester recently told PYMNTS Karen Webster. "Merchants and billers must truly meet consumers where they are, and if that is through the use of a credit card, fantastic. If the card is a debit card, that is excellent. However, if the currency is crypto,