Integrating Crypto Payments Into the Merchant POS Demands Flexibility, Industry Savvy

Welcome to “The Merchants Guide to Accepting Crypto: The Questions to Ask,” a new PYMNTS series aimed at helping merchants big and small, online and in-store, who want to accept crypto payments figure out what they need to know to move ahead.

In this fifth installment of the seven-part series, PYMNTS’ spoke with Shaan Katyal, head of implementation at crypto payments technology firm BitPay, about integrating digital assets and what questions companies considering working with a crypto payments processor partner need to ask.

Part One: Expertise, Experience and Focus Are Critical When Choosing a Crypto Payments Processor

Part Two: Supporting the Right Cryptos and Wallets Is Key When Choosing a Payments Processor

Part Three: Getting Crypto Payments Compliance Right Requires Deep Experience

Part Four: Savvy Retailers Demand Sophisticated Answers to Evolving Crypto Questions

There’s a pretty simple answer to the question of why a merchant would want to integrate crypto payments.

“Crypto is growing in popularity, not just as an investment, but as something that consumers can use to pay for their goods, pay for their services — whether it be for new pair of shoes, that nice big screen TV, or even a trip,” Katyal told PYMNTS. “It’s important to be able to make their products accessible” to consumers who want different payment options.

“And crypto is becoming more and more widespread,” he added. “It’s becoming a standard, and businesses should really start to think about the lost opportunity of capturing those additional customers that have cryptocurrency holdings, that they otherwise might not have seen with a traditional payment method.”

But once you’ve gotten past the “should we,” there’s the “how do we,” which means choosing a firm that can quickly and smoothly integrate crypto payments processing capabilities.

The flip side of that is making it as easy as possible for potential crypto customers to shop with you, he added.

“If you’re a business that wants to accept cryptocurrency and to capture that new market, those new customers that you might not have previously seen before, it’s important to give them options,” he said. “Don’t limit yourself to a specific cryptocurrency, don’t limit yourself to one wallet; that will narrow down your potential market size and deter a lot of customers that otherwise would be very interested in transacting with you.”

BitPay integrates more than 100 digital wallets, he added.

Start With Everywhere

One of the first things to think about, Katyal said, is making sure that the same customer can visit your website, your mall store and your popup location seamlessly.

“You need to be ready to deploy your payment methods across the omnichannel experience, that’s critical,” Katyal said.

“When doing that, you need to look for partners that have a multitude of integration options, not a one-size-fits-all where you have to fit into their model,” he added. “We like to take the approach, let’s have as many different code libraries, as many different eCommerce site plug-ins as possible.”

The goal, he said, is to work with a processor partner who can make the process as plug-and-play as possible. BitPay supports 10 open-source plug-ins like WooCommerce, WordPress and Magento 1 and 2, as well as six programming languages and five integrated solutions: Shopify, Wix, Foxy, 3DCart and Blesta. All of that is really important when it comes to speed of implementation, Katyal said.

“It’s pretty hard to talk about startup eCommerce businesses without thinking of Shopify,” he said. “They’re one of the elephants in the room, and we have plug-ins for Shopify.”

However, he added, there are plenty of other legitimate enterprise retail platforms out there.

“We’re working on a Wix implementation,” Katyal said. “There’re others that have integrated to BitPay to provide their own plug-in support as well — I believe Flow Commerce has an implementation to Shopify — but you can’t have a conversation around eCommerce without talking about WooCommerce/WordPress [and] Magento. These are the big players that run the majority of the internet when it comes to online transactions.”

Checking Out Code

“But what if you’re a business that is not on one of those platforms?” Katyal said. “You have a very customized customer experience that a traditional plug-and-play integration doesn’t work for — that’s where open-source integration methods really come into play.

When you’re in the selection process for a partner, really take a look at their selection of code libraries. Have they thought through developer kits to allow you to take the code and adapt it to your own back-end systems?

“The world of customer experience for eCommerce and in-store, for omnichannel in general, is ever-changing,” he said. “It’s too risky for us to just assume that if we just have a Java SDK or we just have a C# SDK, that that’s going to be enough.”

Katyal noted that it’s not just the largest companies that have these issues, pointing to both very new firms experimenting with the latest tools and to “decades-old companies with the oldest systems or just the most deeply rooted systems you can imagine.”

Test the Waters

There’s another solution for companies that might not want to take the full jump into accepting crypto, even though the implementation can be very fast and simple for the client.

“If a merchant wants to see if there’s an appetite for cryptocurrency,” without the up-front costs and technical work of developing a full back-end integration with a cryptocurrency processor, Katyal said there’s a very simple, no-integration solution BitPay calls Quick Check-Out for Web.

Simply put, it’s a QR code on a tablet or smartphone that clients can scan and pay with their device.

“That’s something we do a lot today,” Katyal noted. “The auto industry is a very real example for us, but also yachts, high-end clothing. We have some big luxury clothing retailers.”

Finance and Security

With the right processor, integrating crypto payments is generally fairly simple — but not always, such as when the merchant has a custom-built or legacy system. If an easy fit isn’t available, he said you want to be sure that the team behind your payments solution has the experience and expertise needed to customize it and help you integrate it.

“Not just from a technical perspective, but more importantly, an operational perspective,” Katyal said. That means “the finance and accounting teams, the information security — that needs to be addressed very professionally — so it’s not just an omnichannel customer experience. It’s a totally different implementation from an internal security perspective.”

While it may not be the same information you’re dealing with when working with credit cards or checks, consumers’ private information is used for know your customer (KYC) identity validation.

“I want to underscore the importance, when shopping around for a payment processor in the crypto world — or traditional payments — you’ve got to look at the history of that company,” Katyal said. “You’ve got to look at their standards and practices room information, security perspective.”

Cryptocurrency may be considered a decentralized payment method, he said, but a processor needs to take regulatory compliance very seriously.

If there’s one takeaway, Katyal said, “It is that cryptocurrency needs to be treated and looked at as a professional payment method, a traditional payment method, when it comes to all of the information security best practices that are important to an organization.”

When selecting a provider, he added, “You really need to be asking, ‘How are you handling the customer’s information? What are you doing with it? How secure are your integrations? Who’s involved? What are your corporate policies when it comes to security and data management practices?’

“That will quickly help you weed out the unprofessional processors and narrow the selection process down to those that are on the up and up — which is an important thing when it comes to all payments, including cryptocurrency.”

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