It’s one of those, done easier than said. Many think it’s a big deal to accept cryptocurrencies for a business. It’s not. In fact, it’s easier to integrate a cryptocurrency gateway to your e-business than integrating a credit card payment gateway.
The first step is to identify a crypto payment processor. I recommend coinbase-commerce, bitpay and coingate, as I have personally evaluated them (ease of integration, fees and business ratings). Processing fees should be less than 1% or else you are getting ripped off. You don’t need to have a presence in a specific country to get an account. It’s as simple as getting a Gmail account.
The second is to integrate into your site or application. All 3 providers I listed have out of the box plug-ins for popular e-com platforms such as Shopify, woo-commerce and Magento. You could also write your custom integration using the APIs given. Any average developer should be able to get this done in a jiffy. It’s not complicated.
The third step is to decide what to do with the payments once you receive them. The obvious two options are to keep them as crypto or convert them to FIAT of your choice (USD, Euro, etc) as and when you need the cash flow for your business. You don’t necessarily need the same gateway to convert.
Please note that Central Bank has clearly said ‘You are on your own’ https://www.cbsl.gov.lk/en/news/public-awareness-on-risks-in-investing-in-virtual-currencies-in-sri-lanka
The purpose of me writing this quick article is to encourage Sri Lankan businesses to be forward-thinking on technology advancements in the payment space. We don’t want to be left behind when the western economies are quickly adopting crypto.
Also, I hope CBSL will soon provide good regulation for banks to operate in this space + allow crypto mining operations in Sri Lanka.
