Crypto for Payments: Ripple and Faster Payments Council Survey Reveals Latest Study Results

JAKARTA - A recent study on cryptocurrency payments conducted by Ripple and Faster Payments Council, a membership-based organization in the United States, has shown that merchants in Latin America will take longer to implement cryptocurrency-based solutions compared to another region.

The results of this study, which aims to understand and quantify the impact of cryptocurrencies on the future payments arena, suggest that other regions will have an edge in this area even with Latam's difficulties regarding inflation and fiat currency devaluation.

According to the results of a survey involving nearly 300 payment institutions, 67 percent of them believe that the boom in digital currency payment adoption in Latin America will occur more than three years from now. Meanwhile, in other regions such as Africa, more than 80 percent of these leaders believe that more than 50 percent of merchants will adopt crypto payments in less than three years from now.

As such, Latin America lags behind other regions such as Europe and APAC, which also enjoy better predictability for massive cryptocurrency payments implementation.

However, this survey presents a good panorama for crypto payments, which leaders in the industry see as a way to complement legacy payment systems. The new blockchain-based system brings several advantages, including reduced process complexity, lower fees, and greater transparency, according to the report.

One of the biggest improvements of the new crypto-based payment system is said to lie in its ability to make cross-border settlements cheaper and easier. Juniper Payments, a member of the Faster Payment Council, estimates that institutions will save $10 billion by 2030 by using alternative crypto systems to settle payments.

However, the fact that digital adoption of payments is already growing in countries such as Argentina, where QR payments, which can also involve cryptocurrency transactions, are breaking records in their use, suggests that slowly but surely, Latin America is trying to adopt currency payments. crypto money as part of their payment ecosystem.

Therefore, although it will take longer to implement a cryptocurrency-based solution, it can be a potential opportunity for market development and growth in this region.