Which Businesses I Know Actually Use Crypto Payments

I asked around among people running small businesses, because the general adoption figures did not match what I was seeing. I wish I had looked at a licensed crypto payment processor before rather than after.

Who was using it

Anyone selling services internationally. Consultants, developers, designers. The most common answer by a wide margin, and the reason was always the same: receiving payment from a distant client was otherwise slow and expensive.

One person in a difficult retail category whose card processing costs were extraordinary once disputes and the reserve were counted. For him it was not a marginal improvement.

A marketplace paying sellers in many countries. Payout costs and reach.

Who was not

Everyone selling domestically to consumers. Cards work, customers have them, nothing to fix.

Two people in regulated industries. Not prohibited, but the internal approval effort exceeded any benefit and they had better things to do.

A shop. Actively considered and rejected, because the confirmation wait hurt the checkout and the saving was small.

The pattern

Adoption tracked the cost of the alternative, precisely.

Where existing payments were cheap and instant, nobody bothered. Where they were expensive, slow, or refused, people had adopted without any enthusiasm for the technology. Funds face the same question with more paperwork, which is where a platform used for real estate settlement fits.

Not one person I spoke to mentioned finding crypto interesting. Every answer was about cost or speed or reach.

The test that follows

Add up what your payments actually cost. Fees, disputes, reserves, currency margins, failed transfers, and the payments you cannot accept at all.

If that number is uncomfortable, there is probably a case. If it is not, there is not.

Most of the people I spoke to had never calculated it. The two who had were both using crypto payments.

The thing that changed recently

Everybody invoicing businesses was using a dollar stablecoin rather than a volatile asset.

That removed the objection their finance contacts had raised, which was always the same: we are not taking a position on the price of something between issuing an invoice and being paid. Whatever I concluded, the balance I actually move sits at the list of countries covered rather than wherever I signed up first.

What I would tell someone considering it

Do the calculation first. Then offer it as an additional option for a quarter, without a discount, and count.

That is two afternoons and it replaces an argument with a number.