A local coffee shop chain in Washington has partnered with Coinbase to allow its customers to pay with cryptocurrencies.
Compass Coffee, a veteran-owned brand with sixteen outlets in the Washington, D.C. area, will now offer its customers the ability to pay for their morning brew with stablecoin known as USDC, which acts as a digital dollar.
The Fox Business report claims that customers who choose to pay USDC at Compass Coffee’s Half Street location can take advantage of a substantial discount of 90 percent on all their orders.
They will also receive a non-exchangeable token(NFT) that can be exchanged for a free can of coffee with Compass and Coinbase logos.
ETFs drive cryptocurrency adoption
One of the main obstacles to the widespread adoption of digital assets as a form of payment is their practicality for everyday transactions.
While larger companies such as Starbucks, Subway and AMC Theatres have recently begun accepting Bitcoin and Ethereum payments, many smaller businesses, especially local stores, are hesitant to adopt cryptocurrency.
However, the launch of ETFs on Wall Street in January sparked discussions about the viability and long-term value of cryptocurrencies. Stablecoins such as the USDC have gained traction because they tend to be pegged to a fixed asset such as the U.S. dollar, which reduces the price volatility of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.
Compass Coffee accepts stablecoin USDC, which is issued by Circle, a crypto company in which Coinbase has a minority stake. Users can convert their dollars to stablecoin using digital wallets or through cryptocurrency exchanges such as Coinbase or Kraken.
Coinbase hopes its partnership with Compass Coffee will encourage other small businesses in the area to adopt stablecoin payments, challenging the perception of cryptocurrencies as purely speculative investment assets among regulators and politicians in Washington.
Coffee cups advertising savings via blockchain
Coinbase and Compass are using coffee cups in a Half Street store to display eye-catching messages announcing savings.
The cups inform customers that merchants in the United States paid about $126 billion for credit card transactions in 2022; that’s 2.5 times the value of the entire U.S. coffee shop market.
Mugs points out that blockchain technology could reduce more than 99 percent of that spending. Compass Coffee reported that it currently loses about 3.75 percent of its revenue from credit card issuers due to the additional fees.
As a veteran-owned small business that faced the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic, Compass realizes the value of every dollar and believes that redirecting funds currently paid to credit card issuers to staff, rents and suppliers could have a transformative effect on their business and local economy.
Although the USDC payment option will initially only be available at the Half Street store, Compass plans to expand the feature to other locations in the future.
“Our partnership with Compass is a good pilot that shows how stablecoin can simplify finances and save small businesses thousands of dollars in unnecessary credit card fees,” said Faryar Shirzad, Coinbase’s director of policy.
