Cryptocurrency has dominated tech news in the early 2020s. But it still seems to occupy a space that’s more investment or asset class than everyday currency.
Is there ever going to be a world in which every ecommerce website accepts crypto as a standard payment method?
Many people are confident it’s going to happen. We thought we’d check in with Dial A Geek’s official representative from the next generation of decision-makers, our Technical Director Yusra Shaeik.
Over to you, Yusra!
Cryptocurrency, ecommerce, and the factors blocking change
There will be a time, perhaps a couple of decades in the future, when some of the most popular cryptocurrencies will be an everyday way to pay for goods and services, both off and online.
At the moment though, cryptocurrency is missing two key ingredients before this can approach being a common reality:
1) Convenience
Convenience is probably the most important factor governing technology adoption rates. Even the most effective or profitable tech tool, feature, or platform isn’t likely to be used as much as one that’s super convenient.
Slightly depressing as this might be, the studies are out there to prove it. As consumers, we humans like things to be made as easy as possible for us. We don’t like having to go out of our way or having to figure something out.
In the modern world, most people probably abstractly like the idea of making some kind of investment in crypto. Yet most don’t have the time to work out the intricacies of what feels like (and often is) a complex technology.
When platforms and providers replace that uncertainty and difficulty with convenience, it’s going to be a different story. This will likely require integrations with platforms like Google Pay and Apple Pay.
Once it’s that easy, using crypto for ecommerce and more is here to stay.
2) Perception of reliability
I bet if there’s one description that occurs in close proximity to crypto in almost every contemporary news story you can find, it will be “volatile”.
This public perception of the risks involved in investing in crypto at the moment seem to be pretty well-founded. It only takes one tweet from Mr Musk and the value of your wallet is wiped out.
That’s not a quality that loudly proclaims, “I am a normal and safe way to pay for things”.
But in a few decades, when crypto has been essentially rebranded by a known quantity like HSBC or PayPal as a simple way of spending money, perceptions of its inherent risk are going to be very different.
The workplace of the future – ecommerce and cryptocurrency
So there you have it. It seems a reasonable bet that cryptocurrency is going to slowly transition from being perceived as a potentially risky asset to usage more like a traditional currency. This is a familiar story from the introduction of many new technologies.
The two missing parts of the puzzle are likely to involve making crypto more convenient to use and doing away with its image (and actual quality, at time of writing) of volatility.
With those factors “solved”, the workplace of the future is likely to be one where you will make ecommerce purchases using cryptocurrency with only vague memories that, at one time, this wasn’t normal.
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