February 22, 2018 -- ADVFN Crypto NewsWire -- Coinbase wants to
make it easy for you to buy shoes or insurance online with
cryptocurrency. The largest U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange now
gives online retailers a way to add a PayPal-like button to their
checkout screens that enables payment in cryptocurrency.
Coinbase is rolling out "Coinbase Commerce" for Ethereum,
Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin. Coinbase Commerce simplifies
the acceptance of cryptocurrencies as payment for goods and
services by enabling online merchants to accept Bitcoin, Bitcoin
Cash, Ethereum and Litecoin payments directly into their digital
wallets.
Coinbase Commerce integrates seamlessly into an online store's
shopping cart checkout flow as an added payment option. It allows
the purchaser pick a cryptocurrency to pay with at checkout, and
then offers the merchant's destination wallet into which the
purchaser then makes a payment.
Cryptocurrency held in a merchants Coinbase Commerce account is
completely separate from their Coinbase account. Coinbase Commerce
does not hold any cryptocurrency on the merchant's behalf. It
simply provides a mechanism by which it is easy for the merchant to
accept cryptocurrency into their own wallet.
Shopify, which was already accepting Bitcoin payments, is now
using Coinbase Commerce to enable merchants on its platform to also
accept Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, and Litecoin. The Shopify
integration gives cryptocurrency-holding consumers access to over
500,000 merchants worldwide.
Most online merchants are still wary of adding cryptocurrency as
a payment option on their ecommerce platforms. Cryptocurrency
values are highly volatile and transaction times are slow. But
Coinbase Commerce may win over ecommerce merchants with its low
service fees totaling around 1% of each transaction. PayPal charges
between 2% and 3% on each transaction.
In addition to merchant resistance to cryptocurrency payment
acceptance, cryptocurrency owners themselves are reticent about
spending any cryptocurrency they are holding at online stores,
hanging on to their cryptocoins in hopes that their value might
increase. Stripe stopped accepting bitcoin in January, saying that
"Bitcoin has evolved to become better-suited to being an asset than
being a means of exchange. This has led to Bitcoin becoming less
useful for payments."
Even so, Coinbase is confident that Coinbase Commerce will be
popular. Coinbase announced on its blog that "With just an email
address and a phone, merchants can sign up and begin accepting
payments in Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum and Litecoin. We’ve
already integrated with Shopify, one of the largest multi-channel
commerce platforms, and are actively adding more integrations to
make accepting cryptocurrency as easy as possible." Other online
merchants reported to be testing Coinbase Commerce include Dell,
Expedia, Dish, the Wikimedia Foundation, and Overstock.com.
By: BGN Editorial Staff