The US tech-focused marketplace Newegg are capitalising on the cryptocurrency trend by announcing the global expansion of Bitcoin payments to 73 Newegg country-specific stores, allowing shoppers to pay in nearly all of the countries the company serves worldwide.
Five years ago, the marketplace was one of the first major online shopping destinations to accept Bitcoin. The marketplace say the payment option was quickly embraced by shoppers ahead of the wider rollout.
The marketplace attributes the expansion to their efforts “og bring[ing] innovation to the online shopping experience and answers customers’ growing preference for our Bitcoin payment option. ”
In 2014, Newegg partnered with BitPay to facilitate Bitcoin transactions for Newegg’s customers in the United States and later in Canada. Since this initial implementation, Newegg say not a single chargeback has been required for any Bitcoin transaction on Newegg.com. The companies now build on this successful collaboration by extending the Bitcoin payment option to new markets.
The value of Bitcoin has varied significantly over the past several years, yet its resilience is evidenced by its recent resurgence and ubiquity as a preferred international currency.
BitPay – which processes upwards of $1B in Bitcoin transactions annually for its ecommerce partners leverages the blockchain to provide transactional transparency and eliminate chargebacks altogether. Additionally, BitPay enables Newegg to increase their margin on each Bitcoin transaction by avoiding credit card fees typically assessed on credit card purchases.
Despite the company’s pride in the cryptocurrency payment, they present some roadblocks to seamless customer experience.
Newegg’s return’s policy says that “all orders fully paid for with Bitcoin are final and cannot be returned for Bitcoin or hard currency. All returns will be made in the form of a Newegg Gift Card. All returns follow our return policy.” This has been raising eyebrows over the validity of such a policy to woo customers to shop again with the marketplace. Nervousness was also heightened over the inability for the third party merchants trading on the marketplace to offer Bitcoin payments on their items, limiting merchants to attract their shoppers with an innovating payment method.
“Bitcoin allows users to send and receive money just as easy as sending an email, opening up opportunities for businesses and consumers globally as a secure, low-cost transactional option for the merchants. Newegg was among the first companies to see this opportunity and has continued to expand its Bitcoin acceptance to nearly all of its customers around the world.”
– Sonny Singh, chief commercial officer, BitPay.
