Coinbase launches crypto e-commerce acceptance
Hello, Coinbase Commerce
Digital currency wallet Coinbase is expanding its horizons – and its potential client base – with the launch of Coinbase Commerce, writes Julie Muhn at Finovate (FinTech Futures‘ sister company).
The new offering aims to enable merchants across the globe to accept cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, and Litecoin payments and deposit the funds directly into their personal wallets. The company says Coinbase Commerce gives merchants full control of their own digital currency, since it is not a hosted service.
To sign up, merchants just need an email address and a smartphone and can directly integrate Coinbase Commerce into their existing checkout flow or add it as a payment option on an e-commerce platform. Coinbase Commerce already integrates with Shopify, which serves 500,000 merchants. The company is actively adding new integrations to facilitate payment acceptance.
Coinbase also provides a merchant dashboard, where business owners can manage payments and monitor earnings from a single place.
Merchants that leverage Coinbase Commerce will join the list of other large businesses that currently accept cryptocurrencies, including Overstock.com, Newegg, Dish, Gyft, Expedia and Microsoft. That said, the volatility of cryptocurrencies, combined with the fact that most people hold cryptocurrencies as a speculation tool and are hesitant to spend it, means that there might be slow adoption for cryptocurrency merchant acceptance.
Coinbase was founded in 2012. In August 2017, it became a fintech unicorn after closing a $100 million round of Series D funding. At that point, Pitchbook estimated Coinbase’s value to be $1.6 billion. Last month, the company acquired talent from Memo.AI to bolster its engineering team during the bitcoin boom.
