Switzerland has been friendly toward Blockchain technology. Digitec Galaxus, the Amazon version in the country has announced that it has finalized plans for start accepting bitcoin from its customers as a means of payment.
Supporting A Number of Coins
The company’s customer will be able to buy items through the store’s checkout using cryptocurrencies as a payment method. This has been made possible through services rendered by Coinify, a Danish company that serves merchants helping them convert coins to fiat.
The list of supported cryptocurrencies include Bitcoin(BTC), Ethereum(ETH), Ripple(XRP), Bitcoin Cash(BCH), Bitcoin SV(BSV), Litecoin(LTC), Binance Coin(BNB), NEO, TRON as well as OmiseGo.
The retailer’s integration with Blockchain features would enable more customers easy access to its services while relying on Coinify to process transaction.
Simple Payment Process
According to the company, the process is quite simple and similar to other payment processes like bank transfer and card payments.
The buyer selects the chosen payment method, in this case cryptocurrency. They should be redirected to the Coinify website to proceed on the transaction.
Cryptocurrencies volatility should not be a problem since transactions made through Coinify are converted to local currency immediately.
The fees are considered low since they are usually about 1.5 percent. Speaking on the support and integration, Oliver Herren, the chief innovation officer for Digitec Galaxus made it clear that the company is more keen on tesing out how things would work with crypto.
“By using Coinify, we are not running into the knife. It is still not clear to me how blockchain is any better than other database technologies. The transactions are so far more expensive and slower than a normal payment method. Decentralization brings only cumbersome improvements. None of the blockchains scale enough. But maybe I have not invested enough time and therefore understand too little how the blockchain ecosystem works.”
Switzerland A Blockchain Hub
Switzerland has been on of the most crypto-friendly nations. It is not surprising that merchants in the country such as Digitec have expressed intentions to support digital currencies.
The adoption is coming after months of bearish market that has seen most digital currencies lose 70 percent of their values. A number of companies and payment processors have already dropped crypto support due to its volatility and the unstable market as seen with Stripe which ended BTC processing in January 2018.
