Redefining customer experience with crypto-first mobility apps

• The future of payments is crypto.
• Currently, many users look at crypto as a short-term investment option, but it is predicted that it will take the place of UPI, card, and other payment options soon.
• This article highlights the benefits and drawbacks of crypto and tells how you can redefine the customer experience by allowing crypto payment options.

Today, payment through mobile apps is considered a norm for shopping, trading, or banking. With increased dependency on mobile devices, the need of the hour is to introduce user-friendly payment methods in mobile apps themselves. The last few years saw various payment options such as UPI, Paytm, PayPal, Google Pay, PayZapp, Freecharge, Mobiwik, coupons, and many more.

Crypto is emerging as one of the new payment options. As a result, many global leaders are rapidly accepting it. With this trend, the future indicates that most mobile apps will be revamped to include crypto payments soon. 

A few top reasons for apps to include crypto as one of the payment options are:

• Zero chargeback

Only receiving parties can refund bitcoin transactions. Therefore, such transactions cannot be reversed. This is the key differentiating between credit card transactions and bitcoin transactions. On the other hand, credit card transactions can be canceled.

• Reduced price fluctuations
  

Unlike in the past, today, the price fluctuations with cryptos have tremendously reduced with crypto processors, such as BitPay. As a result, the risk of losing money due to the changes in the coin value has decreased dramatically.

• Enhanced customer experience
  

Bitcoin is one of the fastest, safest, and easiest mediums to pay your online bills and credit. This feature attracts various banking apps to introduce crypto as one of the payment options.

• Secure digital transactions
  

Unlike a regular payment system, when a user pays in crypto, the user’s data isn’t stored in a centralized hub where data breaches are high. Instead, the user information is stored in the crypto wallet. In addition, the blockchain general ledger verifies and records every crypto transaction, thereby reducing the chances of stealing the user’s identity.

1. Market cap- Larger market cap means more significant investment and more asset stability. Therefore, a larger market cap signifies that the asset is an excellent investment.
2. Price- The price indicates how investors react to cryptocurrency based on the price.

Benefits of Cryptocurrency

• Combats inflation

Cryptocurrency protects you from inflation because it either maintains or increases its value over time, protecting against adverse price fluctuations.

For example, the transactions from the use of legal tenders in your country get affected by the ongoing inflation in your country. However, when it comes to cryptocurrencies, the prices are regulated by global demand and supply, allowing you to go beyond the economic environment. Therefore, cryptocurrencies are indifferent to inflation to a large extent.

• Easy conversion
  

One can purchase cryptocurrency using various currencies across the world. They can be easily converted to different currencies to make payments.

• Quick and simple transactions
  

We can quickly transfer cryptocurrency from one digital wallet to another. For instance, it is easy if you have cryptocurrency in your eToro wallet and are willing to make a payment to Coinbase.

• Record available in the public list
  

Each cryptocurrency transaction is recorded in a blockchain known as a public list. As a result, you can easily trace the history and stop people from spending the coins they do not own.

While there are many seemingly valuable points to back up the use of crypto, some drawbacks keep many individuals and significant institutions from adopting them right away.

Some of them include-

1. Cryptocurrency is highly volatile. To be a reliable investment option, investors will seek more stability.
2. To know how cryptocurrency will function is a task because it is new. There is still ambiguity in users’ minds, and therefore, it will take time for users to embrace it completely.
3. The fact that cryptocurrency is a long-term investment is still debatable.
4. Although cryptocurrency has more security, the security risks are higher if the user doesn’t understand the functioning.
5. Crypto behaves differently in scale. Many experts think that crypto has some severe scalability problems.  

Although many predict that cryptocurrency will take over the prevalent payment options, what it will bring to the market is change. It all depends on how the users accept it and put crypto to its optimum use.

Author: Imtiyaz Khatib, Sr. Director Customer Experience, Avalara India.

Publication: CXO Today