Crypto.com and Ingenico Team on Crypto Payments for Merchants

Payments acceptance provider Ingenico has launched a partnership with Crypto.com.

The new collaboration will bring cryptocurrency payments and merchant services to users of the Ingenico platform, the two companies announced Tuesday (Nov. 5), letting merchants around the world accept crypto payments.

“Through this collaboration, Ingenico merchants can now accept crypto payments and receive funds settlement without currency risk in their local currency,” such as euros, the British pound, or American and Australian dollars, the companies said in a news release.

“At the heart of this offering is Ingenico’s new merchant wallet, connected to AXIUM Android terminals to simplify merchant interactions with the crypto world and other key services. This new functionality also enables merchants to enjoy the flexibility and ease of integrating crypto alongside their existing payment systems,” the company added.

The partnership also lets consumers earn rewards for transactions via Crypto.com Pay, while Ingenico lets merchants manage payments and services through mobile and tablet devices, an effort designed to “normalize crypto payments for real-world experiences.”

Ingenico plans to launch a live pilot in the first quarter of next year, in regions including the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Asia, Europe and Australia.

The partnership is happening at a time when “the broader crypto landscape, and its own institutional players, are seeking greater utility — and recognition — across the financial services ecosystem,” as PYMNTS wrote last month.

Research from PYMNTS Intelligence has found that 77% of merchants who accept crypto payments said they did so because of lower transaction processing fees compared to other methods of payment.

In addition, 32% of merchants that were extending their usage of crypto reported doing so because they believed it could help them land new customers, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence and BitPay collaboration, “Paying With Cryptocurrency: What Consumers and Merchants Expect From Digital Currencies.”

As noted here in October, the crypto sector continues to face pressure from regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Crypto.com sued the commission last month, calling it a “misguided” agency. The suit came after the SEC issued the company a Wells notice, typically a harbinger of enforcement action.

“While this is an unprecedented move for our company to file suit against a federal agency, actions by that agency towards our industry have left us no other choice,” the company said in a news release.

“Specifically, our lawsuit contends that the SEC has unilaterally expanded its jurisdiction beyond statutory limits and separately that the SEC has established an unlawful rule that trades in nearly all crypto assets are securities transactions no matter how they are sold, whereas identical transactions in bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) are somehow not,” it added.