How to Accept Cryptocurrency on Your Website

If you’re looking to maximize your website’s earning potential, you might want to consider accepting cryptocurrency.

You might have heard of bitcoin, which is a type of cryptocurrency. Other popular forms of cryptocurrency include Ethereum and Litecoin. As it grows in popularity, businesses that accept cryptocurrency as a form of payment can attract a unique kind of customer.

What Is Cryptocurrency?

So what is cryptocurrency? It’s a form of payment based on blockchain technology. It doesn’t get housed in banks or other types of financial institutions the way other legal tender does. The blockchain holds details about a person or entity’s transactions to keep track of its cryptocurrency available.

Units of currency are called tokens. To earn cryptocurrency, “miners” solve complicated algorithms out in the crypto network. For each algorithm they solve, they add cryptocurrency to the blockchain.

When these miners solve an algorithm, it helps verify transactions, which is why those miners get awarded with a token for their work.

Why Accept Cryptocurrency?

Each month, users create an additional 300,000 bitcoin wallets, proving that cryptocurrency is here to stay and will likely continue to grow. And with those continuously expanding bitcoin wallets, many businesses have chosen to begin accepting digital currency.

Popular companies you might have heard about that accept digital currency include PayPal, Expedia, Microsoft, Reddit, WordPress and Etsy.

Organizations that choose to accept bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies experience these great benefits.

• Additional customer traffic: people who are involved in cryptocurrencies tend to get pretty excited when a new merchant accepts digital currency. This leads to them helping to spread the word about that business within the community.
• Repeat customers: when merchants accept cryptocurrency, they show customers that they understand them. This builds a stronger relationship between the business and the customer. This helps build repeat customers.
• Fast payment processing: because cryptocurrency is a digital currency, transactions are almost instant. You won’t have to wait tons of time for your transactions to process.
• Improved cash flow and money availability: since payments process so quickly, you can easily withdraw the currency or use it to purchase additional products and supplies for your business. This provides better cash flow for you to operate your business.
• Lower processing fees: you’ll pay about half as much to process a cryptocurrency transaction than you would for someone to use a credit or debit card on your website.

Ways to Accept Cryptocurrency

The simplest way to accept cryptocurrency on your WordPress website is to use the CoinGate plugin. Even once you have the plugin, you’ll need to go into your settings within WooCommerce to activate cryptocurrency payments.

Within the settings, click the checkout tab, and then CoinGate. On that page, you’ll see a checkbox for “Enable Bitcoin payment via CoinGate.”

Before activating this, just be sure that you set up your CoinGate account and enter your API keys in the settings to ensure your transactions go to the right places. You’ll get your API information from CoinGate in the dropdown under your profile where it says, “API Apps.”

You’ll have the option to customize tons of other settings within your website as well for how you take payments and how you work with them as far as your accounting procedures.

Help Setting Up Your Website’s Cryptocurrency Payments

Kelly Website Design offers website support for e-commerce websites and standard websites. Whether you need to add cryptocurrency payment options or are looking for a fresh design, we’re the team that can help.

Contact us to learn more about our services and how we can get you set up with cryptocurrency.