This month, Gucci and luxury fitness club Equinox became two of the latest brands to accept cryptocurrency as payment options for their products and services. While on the surface the goal may be to help reduce friction at checkout, allowing consumers to make payments using bitcoin, ether or even so-called “meme coins” that were created in jest could also serve as an important marketing tool as brands look to deepen their stakes in Web3.
Crypto is, after all, the go-to currency for Web3-native communities, and thus plays a vital role in how users interact with the growing culture of commerce that includes non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and the metaverse.
“If a brand were to decide to mint an NFT that offers holders unique benefits related to the company, that transaction is taking place in crypto,” said Jeremy Cohen, head of Web3 investment at Publicis Media.
Meanwhile, as Web3 attracts more investment and audiences, consumers as a whole are showing a greater appetite for using digital currencies as payment options, said Jess Houlgrave, head of crypto GTM (go-to-market) and strategy at Checkout.com, a payments solution provider. Checkout.com released a report last month outlining this trend, in which it surveyed 30,000 consumers and 3,000 merchants across 11 countries during February and March of this year.
