Introduction

Given the ever-evolving nature of the crypto ecosystem, crypto merchants may struggle to grow and expand while managing to remain competitive. They are faced with various challenges while expanding, such as preventing fraud, integrating new payment methods, removing frictions from the customer experience etc. This is why partnering with the right payment platform that offers the latest innovative payment solutions is crucial for the long-term success of a crypto company. This blog aims to explore the various payment innovations crypto companies should look out for and how these solutions can benefit them.

Real-time data analytics and Intelligent transaction routing (ITR)

Now more than ever, crypto companies have access to large amounts of data that can be leveraged to their advantage. By knowing their customers’ transactions history, the country they’re from, payment methods and currencies they transact in, how often they buy crypto currency and what their average transaction value is, one can gauge the customers’ preferences and behaviour. This gives one a better understanding of payment methods and features they should offer in order to boost conversions. 

Moreover, if one spots a pattern of unsuccessful transactions, this might indicate a partial or full outage on the acquirers’ end. In this case, one can make use of cascading- where failover transactions are automatically sent to a secondary acquiring bank. When deciding between acquirers, merchants are now able to configure intelligent transaction routing (ITR). ITR has been known to optimise the routing of transactions while allowing the cost-efficient continuity of business operations. 

Data insights in the form of acquirer health checks are also extremely beneficial for multi-acquirer setups. A health check of such a kind would include each acquirer’s success rate, reasons for unsuccessful transactions, currency-based conversion rates, and easy-to-navigate distribution graphs for the same. When an acquirer is working in multiple currencies, their conversion rates for each currency may vary. For instance, an acquirer might perform better in USD than they do in EUR. These insights enable crypto companies to add or subtract different currencies from acquirers and as a result, optimise their transaction success rates. Read more on this subject in our blog Using payment analytics and insights to grow your business. 

Automated reconciliation

As a cryptocurrency company grows, they begin dealing with a growing amount of transactions that come with a lot more work. Every time a transaction occurs, different amounts of crypto get exchanged using different payment methods and currencies which can complicate the reconciliation process significantly. As the volume of their transactions grows, it is important to partner with a payment platform that combines flexibility and technology when creating a completely automated reconciliation system. This system should be designed to help crypto companies track their payments for every transaction completed, saving them the headache of having to manually reconcile everything on a spreadsheet. Not only does this increase the company’s day-to-day efficiency but it also gives them better insight into their financial data. 

Fraud compliance

Another trick task crypto merchants have to deal with is fraud compliance. A huge chunk of the general public still sees crypto exchanges as a way to launder money or buy guns illegally. Moreover, despite its promises of security and transparency crypto is not immune to fraud. In fact, one study estimated a loss of $1.2 billion in crypto scams and fraud in the first quarter of 2019 alone. This is why offering a completely secure and compliant platform is crucial in building loyalty and trust among customers. There are several ways in which a payment platform can aid in this mission. For starters, they can set up volume and velocity rules that monitor and restrict the number of transactions that can be done in one hour or one day by a customer/cardholder, as well as the amount for a single transaction. Limiting transactions can safeguard crypto merchants from fraudsters who try to abuse the system. 

With SCA (strong customer authentication) becoming a mandatory requirement for all electronic transactions in the European Economic Area, crypto companies may struggle to stay compliant. What SCA stands for is 2-factor authentication, meaning customers having to put in additional security information to buy crypto in Europe. This is a measure to overcome fraud and increase security for customers using their cards to buy crypto. Implementing a trusted 3DS solution takes care of this compliance requirement, while also ensuring the safe, secure, and frictionless processing of transactions. It may also have a positive effect on the challenging authorisation rates often seen in the crypto industry – since issuers will have more confidence in a transaction if it is fully authenticated. However, one must remember that this can add extra friction to the checkout process if not implemented well. Read more on this subject in our blog Frictionless 3DS2.2 implementation- The challenges.

Conclusion

By now it has become clear that there are several benefits for crypto merchants who wish to update their payment infrastructure. Therefore, partnering with a payment platform that is able to provide real-time analytics, Intelligent transaction routing, automated reconciliation, and fraud compliance will not only safeguard crypto merchants but also increase their day-to-day efficiency and boost their success rates.