OLB Group (OLB), a New York-based e-commerce merchant service provider, is making it easier for businesses to accept cryptocurrency payments.
OLB’s more than 8,500 merchants are now able to accept Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH),
USDC and DAI at the point-of-sale through the company’s OmniSoft
business management platform. Customers wishing to pay with
cryptocurrency in-store or through their mobile phones can simply elect
to do so with their cryptocurrency wallets. All payments are processed
through SecurePay, a payment gateway that authenticates the transaction,
converts the cryptocurrency to U.S. dollars and approves the final
sale.
The decision to integrate cryptocurrency payments was
partly driven by the growth of contactless and online orders during the
Covid-19 pandemic. With the OmniSoft platform already providing
merchants with several options to facilitate payments, cryptocurrencies
were the next logical step.
Ronny Yakov, OLB Group’s CEO, says
the payment gateway and point-of-sale architecture are “familiar
territory for merchants,” which makes integrating cryptocurrencies
through such channels easy.
On the topic of cryptocurrency
payments – a promising but underutilized use case for the industry –
Yakov believes we are still in the very early stages of adoption.
“It’s
very early in crypto-as-a-payment adoption, but we see increasing
interest from merchants exploring this payment option as a means to meet
their customers however and wherever they prefer,” Yakov tells
Cointelegraph.
He also believes certain industries are more likely to adopt crypto payments before others:
“We
anticipate that adoption will happen more quickly in higher-ticket
transactions such as jewelry, B2B billing and real estate because the
transaction fees for cryptocurrency processing are lower – often half of
typical credit card fees.”
Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin
have struggled to become a viable medium of exchange, inviting
criticism about their utility. Charlie Munger, the billionaire investor
and Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman, recently criticizedBitcoin for being “too volatile to serve well as a medium of exchange.”
With
development work on scaling and sidechains still in progress, it
remains to be seen whether cryptoassets will ever function efficiently
as payment systems. In the meantime, assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum
are valued for their store-of-value and development capabilities,
respectively.
source link : https://cointelegraph.com/news/olb-group-enables-crypto-payments-for-thousands-of-us-merchants
