Survey: 97% of payments companies see a role for cryptocurrencies

Nearly every participant in the FPC (97% of respondents) agreed that cryptocurrency and blockchain technology will play a significant role in delivering faster and cheaper payments over the next three years. Such results were reported by Ripple.

Seventeen percent of respondents have already implemented cryptocurrency transactions. Fifty-two percent of those surveyed said they were considering expanding their product lines to digital assets.

The study involved 950 companies, including analysts and CEOs from 45 countries.

281 respondents answered 25 questions about blockchain payments use cases and advantages, ownership of digital assets, and existing barriers.

More than half of respondents agreed with the forecast that cryptocurrency transactions would be adopted by the majority of merchants by 2024.

In the Middle East and Africa, similar answers were given by 27% of executives regarding the horizon of the next 12 months. Ripple attributed these data to the emergence of mobile cryptocurrency-enabled payments and the development CBDCs.

A significant barrier to the development of services is the lack of regulatory clarity (89% of respondents).

Other responses cited include:

• limited adoption in the industry (45%);
• accounting for digital assets (32%);
• the need to protect consumers from volatility (24%);
• the need for technical investments (20%);
• lack of decisive leadership (19%);
• unclear benefits (10%).

In July 2022, a joint study by the news aggregator PYMNTS and payments processor Bitpay found that for 84.8% of merchants, payments via cryptocurrency became a means of expanding the customer base.