Merchants And Innovators Fight Friction — But Sometimes It Wins

Reducing friction is among the top goals of the digital era. Sometimes, real-life payments hassles encourage entrepreneurial action to fix a global problem. Other times, innovators combine cutting-edge technologies in an attempt to bring more security and seamlessness to the healthcare space. Reducing friction also can be a relatively simple matter of point-of-sale innovating. But occasionally, friction takes on a different, seemingly irreversible form, and — in the case of cryptocurrency — looks likely to win.

Data:

80 percent: Share of market held by cash in the Philippines.

$190 million: Amount of cryptocurrency stuck in storage after the death of the QuadrigaCX founder.

115,000: QuadrigaCX customers without access to their cryptocurrency after the founder’s death.

44 percent: Share of health and beauty merchants interested in smart POS systems.

20 percent: Segment of patient records not matched accurately within the same healthcare system.