Crypto Payments Volume In eCommerce Surges by 63% Despite Challenging 2022

At first glance, the ongoing bear market suggests that cryptocurrencies and their usefulness as means of payment have lost traction. But what do the actual numbers tell us about the crypto activities happening in retail?

The number of merchants accepting cryptocurrency payments is growing even when markets are experiencing a significant downturn. Meanwhile, the number of cryptocurrency transactions in the e-commerce sector has been climbing steadily.

Cryptocurrency payment processor CoinGate has compiled a report on the behavior of crypto-friendly shoppers and merchants over the past couple of years. Interestingly, the statistics reveal that despite the ongoing ‘crypto winter’, crypto payments in eCommerce continue thriving.

Interest in shopping with crypto is gaining momentum

The study shows that in 2022, CoinGate-powered merchants have collected 927,294 crypto payments in total, or approximately 2.7 times more than the yearly average, marking a 63% increase from the previous year of 2021.

The number renders to one paid crypto order processed by CoinGate every 34 seconds.

The most popular cryptocurrencies for payments

Some cryptocurrencies are being used for payments more frequently than others.

According to CoinGate, in 2022, Bitcoin accounted for nearly half or 48% of all transactions. Notably, it’s 7.6% less than in 2021, suggesting that Bitcoin’s dominance in payments, despite the growing number of transactions, has been slightly diminished by altcoin payments.

The second most popular cryptocurrency used for shopping in 2022 was USDT, with 14.8% dominance, followed by Ethereum (10.9%), Litecoin (9.6%) and TRON (5.8%).

Lightning Network continues to grow

In 2022 alone, payments made through CoinGate’s Lightning Network node grew by 97% and accounted for 6.29% of all orders paid in Bitcoin, compared to 4.53% in 2021. That means, on average, every 16th order at CoinGate was paid using the Lightning Network layer last year.

Crypto payments retain merchants’ curiosity

Despite the overall market downturn, CoinGate has witnessed a 48% increase of newly registered merchants in 2022 compared to 2021, with such industry juggernauts like NordVPN joining the list of crypto-friendly establishments.

The most common reason for accepting crypto payments cited by merchants remains the same every year – better accessibility to services for the unbanked and privacy-conscious customers, ultimately resulting in more sales.

According to the CEO of IT infrastructure service provider Cherry Servers, Vaidas Rutkauskas, accepting crypto payments was one of the most successful business decisions in a long time.

“We have integrated crypto payments based on our customer needs – most of them prefer paying with crypto,” explains Vaidas, adding that “customers were happy with the innovation, and we were excited about the opportunity to offer our services to an even wider range of customers. Currently, crypto payments take up a large part of our basket, and consistent growth is observed.”

Since today’s payment processors eliminate the headache of crypto price volatility by allowing instant settlements to fiat currencies, there aren’t many reasons why setting up crypto payments shouldn’t be considered by merchants seeking innovative ways to reinvigorate their businesses.

That’s also the train of thought of another company that employs CoinGate payment processing services – Hostinger: “Not only we have the option to offer different types of cryptocurrencies for payments, but we are also able to control the volatility risk by converting crypto to fiat instantly, which is one of CoinGate’s features we enjoy the most,” says Gediminas Griška, Hostinger’s Head of Payments.

Crypto payments are not going out of fashion just yet

One thing that can be said with confidence is that cryptocurrency payments are far from an armageddon scenario and are actually showing signs of growth.

Will businesses finally take notice and adopt alternative means of payment on a broader scale? Only time will tell, but the positive signs are not to ignore.