Why do global holidays require borderless payments?

The holidays have gone global.

This has been confirmed by every single trend and metric we can think of: ecommerce is now a global reality.

Ecommerce exploded during the pandemic, as businesses, small and large, were forced to invest strongly in their socially distant online stores. While some expected these changes to recede as lockdowns became a thing of the past, that didn’t happen. Economic activity in general has slowed down, but ecommerce as a percentage of retail continues to rise. To quote Morgan Stanley, this is “evidence of a real behavioral shift”.?

This is further confirmed and strengthened by the globalization of our holidays calendar.

Long past the point where Christmas was a strictly religious festival, the commercial impact of the holiday season is felt with incredible impact in all continents. Holiday retail sales in the US are closing in on a trillion dollars, almost twice as much as twenty years ago. In South America, we see a similar phenomenon, with skyrocketing sales for the holidays in large economies like Brazil.

Europe? The same, with several countries cleanly in the eleven figures. Africa? The same, with countries like Cameroon and Uganda reporting increases over 50 and 30% respectively in their holiday spending.

Even in countries with little religious affiliation to Christianity, such as Japan, a more secular form of Christmas is developing its own traditions.

And it’s not just Christmas that is taking over the holiday season. Black Friday is now a global phenomenon as well. Countries as disparate as Thailand and Brazil are now said to have similar participation rates as the US, where the tradition originated.

New Year’s Day? Even in China, whose very own New Year is also celebrated a little bit around the world, January the 1st is a public holiday. There are few places around the earth that don’t celebrate this festival.

What can we learn from all of these numbers and stats? With ecommerce becoming more and more significant, and key sales drivers like holidays becoming ever more global, what can businesses do to adapt?

The simplest answer is often the right one: adopt crypto payments.

Crypto payments with Utrust are:

• Truly global: We are borderless, and your payments and invoices can be too. No added delays, no extra fees, no extra bureaucracy. The Internet has no borders, and neither do we.
• Internet native: Foolproof security. No chargebacks. No intermediary (not even us, as a payment gateway) can mess with what you do with your own money. Transactions are immutable and saved in a public ledger. Your clients don’t have to share their personal information online, no matter where they’re from.
• Not volatile: Merchants that use Utrust needn’t worry about the crypto market. We offer crypto settlements, but if you’d rather settle in fiat, you can do that too. No crypto accounting if you don’t want it. Get paid in your bank account, as per usual.

Are you ready to be future-proof? It's one click away, here.