73% of FIs That Offer Cryptocurrency Plan to Add More

Despite the availability of new payment options, many financial institutions (FIs) lag the marketplace interest in cross-border payments innovations, especially when it comes to providing B2B clients with access to cryptocurrency tools.

In fact, FIs that do not currently offer cryptocurrency access have limited interest in doing so. Just 4% answered “yes” to having plans to give their customers the ability to use cryptocurrency in the next 12 months, while 76% say “maybe” and 20% state that they definitely will not, according to “Cryptocurrency, Blockchain and Cross-Border Payments,” a PYMNTS and Circle collaboration based on extensive surveys of executives at 250 multinational businesses and 250 financial institutions.

Get the study: Cryptocurrency, Blockchain and Cross-Border Payments: How Multinationals Leverage New Technology to Optimize Business Payments

This lack of enthusiasm contrasts sharply with what we observe among FIs that already offer cryptocurrency access. Seventy-three percent of these plan to offer their customers access to additional cryptocurrencies in the next 12 months, underscoring the fact that FIs that have taken the leap into cryptocurrency widely see continued strong potential and plan to expand these services.

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Offering cryptocurrency and blockchain solutions to their customers requires FIs to consider a host of technological, commercial and regulatory variables, and they can easily find themselves at a loss about what to prioritize. PYMNTS research finds a lack of consensus among FIs about which factors are influencing their strategies. They most commonly indicated the strength or weakness of their digital infrastructure as a significant driver, but just 26% indicated this issue as being important, followed by attracting and retaining customers (24%) and the potential for better data security (23%).

FIs also show little consensus about which roadblocks they believe stand in the way of their innovation strategy of offering cryptocurrency and blockchain products. Just 31% identified the most frequently cited barrier — that the profitability of these products is not clear — as a problem, with concerns about data security (29%) as the runner-up. Approximately one-quarter of respondents identified seven of the eight remaining obstacles specified in our survey.