Largest Swiss Online Retailer Digitec Galaxus Now Accepts Crypto

[cybersofts]

Leading Swiss online retailer Digitec Galaxus has announced that it will now accept cryptocurrencies, according to a press release published on March 19.

Per the announcement, the shop is now accepting Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Bitcoin SV (BSV), Ethereum (ETH), Ripple (XRP), Binance Coin (BNB), Litecoin (LTC), Tron (TRX), NEO (NEO) and OmiseGO (OMG) for purchases worth over CHF 200 (about $200). The release further claims that the shop hosts around 2.7 million products, ranging from wheat beer to gaming PCs.

The new payment method was reportedly jointly developed as part of a pilot project with Swiss payment processor Datatrans and in collaboration with Danish crypto payments startup Coinify. The system opens 15-minute-time windows for customers, during which the crypto exchange rate doesn’t change in order to make the payment with a fee of 1.5 percent.

As part of its move towards crypto, the company also added a crypto wallet category to ecommerce platform, accompanied by a dedicated guide, and released a blog post under the title “Diamonds or Gold Are Better Suited to Get Rid of Illicit Money.” In the latter post, the company’s chief innovation officer Oliver Herren admitted that he is not fully convinced of the advantages of blockchain over traditional database systems. Still, he concludes:

    “But maybe I just haven’t invested enough time in fully understanding how the blockchain ecosystem works.”

Lastly, the company also released a blog post dedicated to its internal engineering team behind crypto integration. In the post, which is mostly an interview, the company explains on a high-level what blockchain is.

According to e-commerce data platform ecommerceDB, Digitec Galaxus’ net sales amounted to over $261 million in 2018 and the store, first launched in 2010, is the world’s 341st biggest online retailer.

Other large retailers internationally have also looked into the idea of adding crypto payments options on their platforms, with Overstock.com’s acceptance of Bitcoin payments as early as 2014 as a major example.

As Cointelegraph reported in April last year, Canadian online trading and barter platform Bunz Trading Zone is launching its own cryptocurrency.

Also, in February last year, Japan’s largest e-commerce company Rakuten, with a market capitalization of over $12.5 bln, announced its own plans to launch a cryptocurrency called Rakuten Coin.


Reference: https://cointelegraph.com/news/largest-swiss-online-retailer-digitec-galaxus-now-accepts-cryptocurrencies

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[pat4cryptoreal]

The ecosystem is spreading and it will soon be part and parcel of every section especially the financial unit. It is unveiling on daily basis.

[butka]

Great news, great indeed. Keeping the finger crossed for their system to succeed and inspire the other online retailers to follow them soon.

The system opens 15-minute-time windows for customers, during which the crypto exchange rate doesn’t change in order to make the payment with a fee of 1.5 percent.

I hope they won't regret this decision, because, in 15-minutes, the price of some cryptocurrencies can change a lot. The fee is more or less reasonable I guess.

[MakeMoneyBtc]

In the last months we have seen multiple online retailers accepting crypto as a payment method but this even greater because are talking about a store with sells worth hundreds of millions of dollars every year. I will be interesting to see how this decision is going to affect this retailer sales.

I hope they won't regret this decision, because, in 15-minutes, the price of some cryptocurrencies can change a lot. The fee is more or less reasonable I guess.

I agree with you , especially because they accept 10 different currencies and the price of them always changes. They are probably in partnership with a service similar to Bitpay(here you can find a 15 minute time window but they only use bitcoin and bch) and payments are handled through that system automatically so they don't have to worry that much.

[dothebeats]

Switzerland used to be one of the world's bitcoin centers knowing how many retailers and merchants are accepting bitcoin on the said country. Also, some of the world's first bitcoin conventions were also held in Switzerland IIRC, so it's great that the large supply chains and retailers of the said country is now accepting bitcoin and cryptocurrencies on their checkout screens. I just hope that they won't pull this decision after a few months unlike any other retailers who silently removed the bitcoin option on their checkout pages.

[Beerwizzard]

How will they accept cryptocurrencies? Is that gonna be something like bitpay when you pay with BTC and a seller receives fiat or they are going to totally accept cryptocurrencies?
By the way, in 2nd case, if crypto payments will be somehow popular in their store then they might become another big whale and in case of any financial crisis they may dump their coins.

[wuvdoll]

How will they accept cryptocurrencies? Is that gonna be something like bitpay when you pay with BTC and a seller receives fiat or they are going to totally accept cryptocurrencies?

I am able to get your point but we are individual hence thinking like that but for a business point of view, I guess they might convert their crypto payments instantly into their local fiat hence there will be no bottleneck will be appearing just due to the introduction of new payment options. Accepting cryptos through a payment processor would be the first priority for any developed business as it will eliminate lots of hassles including withstanding against hard volatility of crypto markets.

if crypto payments will be somehow popular in their store then they might become another big whale and in case of any financial crisis they may dump their coins.

Not all the merchants who are accepting bitcoins cannot become a whale unless otherwise they will do stash all their incoming transactions and compensating business with other income stream. You are talking a new whale as a negative thing, but they will help crypto markets to grow by saving cryptos in massive numbers.

[Crypdon]

Why would it accept OMG? Great news for crypto that they accept a variety of coins but some like bitcoin sv is certainly questionable. What about stellar, eos, and cardano? Even dash should be added

[Beerwizzard]

if crypto payments will be somehow popular in their store then they might become another big whale and in case of any financial crisis they may dump their coins.

Not all the merchants who are accepting bitcoins cannot become a whale unless otherwise they will do stash all their incoming transactions and compensating business with other income stream. You are talking a new whale as a negative thing, but they will help crypto markets to grow by saving cryptos in massive numbers.

Previously we could witness situations when some major ICO after successfull tokensale is selling its ETH. In this case they were dumping millions worth of ETH to the market and the price obviously dropped a bit.

How will they accept cryptocurrencies? Is that gonna be something like bitpay when you pay with BTC and a seller receives fiat or they are going to totally accept cryptocurrencies?

I am able to get your point but we are individual hence thinking like that but for a business point of view, I guess they might convert their crypto payments instantly into their local fiat hence there will be no bottleneck will be appearing just due to the introduction of new payment options. Accepting cryptos through a payment processor would be the first priority for any developed business as it will eliminate lots of hassles including withstanding against hard volatility of crypto markets.

Well, that was just my thoughts. I'm 100% sure that they won't have billion $ worth of BTC revenue so they probably won't become a new whale anyway.
But yes, making it easy to pay in crypto is an important step forward for crypto users.

[TheCoinGrabber]

I checked their site but can't check the prices since I haven't made an account. Anyone here who tried to put items in their cart and tried checking to see which coins are available?

This is good news. Now if we can only get Lazada and Shoppee, SEAs biggest online retailers, to also accept crypto payments, then that would be great.

[stfN2128]

fundamentels for cryptos getting better and better day by day. nice to see that switzerland is moving fastly forward for crypto adoption. it's just a matter of time when other big retailers will follow all over the world.

[shield132]

Every fact of retailers accepting bitcoin and other altcoin payments hugely increases chance of crypto's adoption. It seems like more and more stores are accepting it, will be great to know what kind of influence does it has on their sails, is it same and some people just moved on crypto payment as a better and easy option or integrating of crypto payments increased number of their customers.
Btw Didn't know if ebates become rakuten.

[Vaskiy]

Swiss being one of the country contributing large economy through its advancement as well through the banking services already have lots and lots of services accepting bitcoin. Now largest online retailer getting into acceptance of bitcoin into their business is really good and a must in the growing economy.

[traderethereum]

How will they accept cryptocurrencies? Is that gonna be something like bitpay when you pay with BTC and a seller receives fiat or they are going to totally accept cryptocurrencies?
By the way, in 2nd case, if crypto payments will be somehow popular in their store then they might become another big whale and in case of any financial crisis they may dump their coins.

I think they will do the same thing as bitpay and I am happy to see that they were accepting so many altcoins besides of bitcoin. It will make a competition between bitpay and digitec, and I am sure that people will try to use crypto.

That is good news for crypto users because now, we have another option to buy a product from the online store and I think digitec will get so many new customers that buying many products in that site.

[el kaka22]

First of all the first thing that caught my eye and how awesome was the fact that there is an online shop that sells 2.7 million products, WOW. I mean it listed as anything from wheat beer to gaming PC but seriously if they really do have 2.7 million products thats like amazon but for smaller niche location.

After that it looks like they are not really eliminating any of the big coins, to us coins like ripple and bitcoin-sv are all joke coins that do not have place in crypto currency, one is a company that is trying to keep their coin alive by pump and dump schemes and earn money from companies that use their blockchain and the coin is totally worthless since it has no connection with any of that, the other is a hobby project by a crazy lunatic who thinks he is satoshi nakamoto.

If I were them I would have selected which coins I will be using a lot more carefully but as long as there is 2.7 million products on sale for bitcoin I think its a win for us.

[alisafidel58]

This is good news. Now if we can only get Lazada and Shoppee, SEAs biggest online retailers, to also accept crypto payments, then that would be great.

I think Lazada and Shoppee are still having thought about putting cryptocurrency in their payment option. I'm sure someone from their company manages to talk about adding it up but since the price of cryptocurrency varies every minute I think this is what they are most afraid of.

[DdmrDdmr]

I’ve given the site a run, to see how the payment procedure look like. You need to register on the site, provide contact info and address (fake in my case), and once you check-out, you get the option to pay in crypto (prices during the purchase process were in Swizz Francs during my test, until I proceeded to check-out).

The screens related to the purchasing process in crypto look like this (15 minute counter on top of each screen):

A – Payment Method


B – Payment Conditions in Crypto


C – Payment Options in Crypto


D – Payment in BTC


E – Payment in ETH



Not going any further ...

[n0ne]

The retail network of Switzerland accepting bitcoin is a great news, following the same we need more similar networks start accepting bitcoin as well other cryptocurrencies as a source of payment. The payment gateway is being shown in an above quote which looks much easier to use and no extra charge is truly attractive as other payment gateways have got 5%,2% and so on.

[gowobonyok]

I'm afraid this is just a hype, or an attempt to lift the crypto market value and then leave. I mean, this step must be widely followed by customers and acceptable to the public.

[Baofeng]

There is even another news that  Avnet is one of the world’s largest distributors of electronic components and services has already started to accept bitcoin as mode of payment.

https://7bitcoins.com/fortune-500-avnet-starts-accepting-btc-payments-via-bitpay/

This is welcoming news, maybe those companies really wanted to join the hype as well probably make more money when bitcoin price shoots up in the next coming years. So it looks like a win-win situation and hope that more companies will follow suit as well.

[davis196]

When big online retailers accept bitcoin,that's great,but when they decide to create their own coin/token,that's not so great.The Rakuten coin and the Trading Zone coin are going to be nothing more than centralized tokens,fooling the noobs that those companies are "crypto-friendly","innovative" and "cool"...
What's the point of creating their own tokens,when they could easily adopt bitcoin.I guess they would want to manipulate the price of their company "coins" in the future.

[DdmrDdmr]

<...>

I've searched around, and Rakuten seems to have two things in mind concerning Crypto:

a-   Creare Rakuten Coin
https://bravenewcoin.com/insights/japanese-e-commerce-giant-to-buy-cryptocurrency-exchange

The Rakuten Coin initiative, which converts reward points into tokens using blockchain technology, is also underway.

Seems therefore to be related with the fidelity program, although in older articles the aim seemed higher and more universal.


b-   Integrate cryptocurrency (Bitcoin and perhaps others) as a payment means into their platform:
https://toshitimes.com/the-japanese-version-of-amazon-might-soon-accept-cryptocurrencies/
https://www.investinblockchain.com/rakuten-soon-to-accept-crypto/

Not confirmed, but reading between lines and viewing Rakuten reports seems to hint this.