Deloitte: 85% of Merchants Expect 'Ubiquitous' Digital Currency Payments in Five Years

By Sujith Somraaj

A survey conducted by "Big Four" accounting firm Deloitte indicates that nearly 85% of executives from various U.S retail organizations expect digital currency payments to become “ubiquitous” in their respective industries in the next five years.

The multinational professional services firm, in collaboration with PayPal, conducted a poll among 2,000 senior executives at U.S. retail organizations in sectors including cosmetics, digital goods, electronics, fashion, food & beverage, home/garden, hospitality, leisure, and transportation.

While digital currency is a broad term covering both cryptocurrencies and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), the survey found that cryptocurrencies specifically are a high priority for organizations. More than 85% of respondents are giving high or very high priority to enabling cryptocurrency payments, while around 83% are doing the same for stablecoins. Nearly three quarters (75%) of respondents revealed that they have plans to accept either crypto or stablecoin payments in the next two years.

Of all the responding retailers, only a meagre 1% have no plans to implement digital currency payments in the next two years, while 26% have already done so and 39% plan to in the next 12 months. Over half (54%) of large retailers with revenues north of $500 million surveyed have invested more than $1 million to integrate digital currency infrastructure into their business.

Retailers embrace crypto payments

Major retailers including iconic fashion brand Gucci, French luxury brand Balenciaga, and Elon Musk’s SpaceX have all made announcements about accepting cryptocurrency payments in the last month.

Earlier this month, PayPal expanded its crypto offering to enable users to transfer cryptocurrency to external wallets, meeting a long-standing demand among crypto advocates. Meanwhile, other major payment processing companies including Stripe, and Megasoft (a Venezuelan payment processing company) have begun crypto pilot programmes for their merchants. 

The rising popularity of cryptocurrency cards, which enable users to spend their cryptocurrencies using traditional cards at merchants powered by Visa and Mastercard, has also fueled merchant adoption.

Deloitte’s fellow Big Four accounting firms are also leaning into cryptocurrencies. Earlier this year, the Canadian arm of multinational professional services company KPMG announced that it has added Bitcoin and Ethereum to its balance sheet.

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