Vilnius-based Coingate, cryptocurrency payment gateway for European merchants, is teaming with Paris-based Prestashop, an open source ecommerce solution. The combination means more choices for cryptocurrency enthusiasts and might encourage an increase in adoption.
Coingate + Prestashop = 80,000 More Merchants
Dmitrijus Borisenka, Coingate CEO, explained, “Encouraging adoption among people beyond the tech-savvy early-adopters is one of the biggest priorities for us. Prestashop has an ideal base of small to medium stores that may well utilise cryptocurrencies not only as an innovative and increasingly popular payment method, which is much cheaper than traditional card payments, but also the promotional benefits that the Bitcoin tag carries.”
Partnership between the two companies is expected to reach as many as 80,000 European merchants. The idea is to weave Coingate into Prestashop’s backend, providing users with a near frictionless experience.
“There is an entire new market of people who own all kinds of cryptocurrencies and are looking for ways to spend them,” Mr. Borisenka continued, “but the gap between customers and merchants in this sphere is still huge. It is therefore crucial to educate and encourage businesses to adopt a forward-thinking attitude and to overcome the prevailing misconceptions that surround cryptocurrencies.”
Settlements Limiting Volatility
After setting up an account with Coingate, the team promise merchants a payment module capable of installation in “a few clicks.” They’re set to support bitcoin cash, bitcoin core, and nearly 50 other cryptocurrencies. For merchants, it’s a single payment solution casting a wide crypto net. An added feature is in settlement: payments come in a single currency of the merchant’s choice.
Elaborating, Mr. Borisenka assured, “It is absolutely safe to accept cryptocurrencies as a way of payment. We protect our merchants from exchange rate volatility risk by locking the price of Bitcoin at the moment of the purchase. Merchants who opt to receive Euro payouts from us, essentially, do not have to touch cryptocurrencies at all – we handle every stage of the process.”
Settlements are made in Euros real-time the next day, which speaks to the volatility issue. Both companies are experienced in payment and cryptocurrency sectors. Coingate has 1,500 accounts around the globe, 50,000 users, and monthly revenue around €10 million. Prestashop has been around since 2007, and has evolved into an open source platform with more than a quarter million online stores in nearly two hundred countries.
Do you think merchant acceptance is key to crypto adoption? Let us know in the comments!
Images via Pixabay, Coingate.
Original Post
