Cryptocurrency has a trust problem. Most merchants look at it, see the volatility, note the scaling problems, and go back to their trusted VISA and Mastercard setups for their online daily settlements.
NetCents Technology (NC.C) management has been trying to crack the code on daily payments throughout 2020, trying their best to streamline and enhance user-experience for merchants in order to influence mass adoption. They’ve done some research, which has suggested that crypto-holders are interested in using their crypto in a way that’s convenient and that merchant user-experience is key to accomplishing their goal.
“Since we migrated NetCents to a crypto-only platform we have been working diligently to overcome public perceptions that cryptocurrency isn’t trustworthy. The ability to offer daily settlements to merchants is another feather in our cap in the eyes of our merchants, as they can get their money faster. Which really increases the confidence level in our products,” said Clayton Moore, founder and CEO of NetCents Technology.
The company’s research noted that the largest point of contention for widespread merchant acceptance of cryptocurrency was the delays in settlement time. On the microtransaction front—nobody wants to wait ten minutes for their bottle of wine to clear. This prompted the final additions to the enhanced merchant suite, including something they’re calling daily payment capability for all US-based merchants using the platform. This eliminates settlement time as a gatekeeping function from mainstream crypto-adoption.
The road to where they are today started in February, when the company initialized settlement processing for enterprise merchants, with over $100,000 a month in crypto-transactions. The company leapfrogged over the scaling issues for daily settlements by attaching themselves to the ACH to eliminate the costs associated with merchant payouts.
Now NetCents offers daily settlements for all United States-based merchants.
In addition to streamlining and offering daily settlements to merchants, the Company has improved the merchant experience in 2020 with these merchant gateway advancements:
- Addition of Lightning Network as a payment method
- Enterprise invoicing suite to support SaaS, PaaS, agencies, and B2B merchants
- Enhanced Business Intelligence reporting
- Expanded and streamlined merchant and onboarding support
- Expansion of refund functionality within the merchant gateway
- Enhancement to merchant gateway and terminal API’s for custom enterprise integrations
But there’s more.
The company added onto the ACH integration, including the ability to service large-scale settlements through a USD$1.4 billion credit facility that lets the company cover their US-based merchants, and given how unstable most economic activity has been throughout this year with COVID-19, it’s comforting to get even a little stability.
“We have been very busy during these times, the interest in using crypto as a payment mechanism, as well as touchless, and cashless payments has really put a spotlight on our platform both in the eyes of the end consumer, merchants, and financial intermediaries,” said Moore.
Crypto has other problems which may scare off would be investors and merchants looking for an alternative to Visa and Mastercard charges for their daily transactions—issues like the heavy learning curve, and the general lack of regulations. Also more significant technical problems involving scaling and counterparty risk, but one step at a time.
This is progress.
—Joseph Morton
