Coinbase, a leading U.S. cryptocurrency exchange, claims that Americans could have saved at least $74 million in 2022 by leveraging crypto tech instead of using credit cards as payment options. In its latest State of Crypto report, Coinbase reveals how traditional finance system institutions keep transaction fees high in a system “mired in delays.”
Coinbase Remarks Using Crypto Is Cheaper Than Credit Cards
Coinbase, a leading U.S.-based crypto exchange, emphasized the savings that adopting a cryptocurrency payments system would bring compared to traditional credit cards. In its latest State of Crypto report, Coinbase claims that Americans could have saved at least $74 billion in credit card fees by using an alternative, crypto-based payment option.
This means that only by paying with cryptocurrency each American household would have saved $600 in 2022. Nonetheless, savings don’t just extend to end users. Merchants are also affected by these fees, having paid fees of $126 billion to process these credit card transactions, while the cost of processing payments using crypto could be negligible.
The report explains that crypto payments can be up to 5,000 times cheaper than payments through traditional methods, like wires, when accounting for the best-case scenario and using a proof of stake-based network, like Solana or Polygon.
Also, the report declares that crypto payments are processed quicker than traditional payments. These are at least 24 times and, at most, 432,000 times faster than legacy methods, depending on the cryptocurrency used for the transaction. Crypto for payroll payments is a use case also examined, allowing for near-instant payments compared to delivery times of between one and six business days.
People are starting to be more aware of the benefits that alternative blockchain systems offer compared to legacy alternatives, which are slower, costlier, and depend on the actions of financial institutions. The report revealed that 71% of consumers want cheaper transactions, 70% want faster transactions, and 63% look for better access to these payment options.