It might be time to start accepting bitcoin on your e-commerce site.
From voice to crypto, Gen Z attitudes reveal an open-mindedness to adopting or experimenting with new ways of paying for purchases.
While individual states fight to ensure businesses continue to accept hard currency (arguing that cashless systems discriminate against certain customers), young Gen Z consumers who’ve grown up with a portable computer always in their pockets reveal a growing affinity for automated Amazon Go-style payments, voice-activated purchases and fraud-fighting cryptocurrency.
Paysafe, an end-to-end payments solutions firm, culled these findings from surveys of 6,000 consumers across the Gen Z, millennial, Gen X and baby boomer demographics in Austria, Belgium, Canada, Germany, the U.K. and the U.S.
Citing Gen Z’s “overwhelmingly…positive attitudes toward new technology,” Paysafe found that two-thirds (67 percent) of this young consumer group believe automated scan-and-go checkout processes will not just save them precious time in the store but also “make shopping more enjoyable.”
And their appetite for voice technologies shone throne the survey, too. Gen Z (55 percent) and millennials (56 percent) are decidedly on the same page in describing voice-activated payments as both faster and more convenient than the traditional approach of typing in card payment details online.
Gen Zers, it seems, are ready and willing to pay their way through life with the spoken word as their guide—anywhere and everywhere. They’re interested in paying by voice over a vehicle’s connected entertainment system (39 percent), replenishing groceries by talking to a smart refrigerator (43 percent) and making a one-time movie, music or other entertainment with a simple voice command (51 percent), the survey found.
The cohort lags only its millennial counterpart (60 percent versus 69 percent) in its usage of biometric authentication technology, which includes not just voice activated systems but also facial recognition and fingerprint identification, Paysafe found.
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Young consumers, according to Paysafe’s “Lost in Transaction: Gen Z expectations at the checkout” report, believe cryptocurrencies like bitcoin could solve many of the problems plaguing payments in a world where e-commerce growth outpaces retail overall. Though cryptocurrency faces its own issues with wild valuation peaks and plunges, teens and early 20somethings believes digital currency will gain greater acceptance in the near future—and they could be leading the charge.
As of now, fewer Gen Zers (5 percent) actually use crypto compared with older demographics (7 percent). But 30 percent of the youngest consumer generation can picture themselves paying with crypto in the next 24 months, assuming there’s more information about digital money and it becomes more widely available, Paysafe found. Even more telling, 38 percent of Gen Z respondents (and 43 percent of millennials) expressed the belief that adopting crypto effectively could combat debit and credit card fraud online.
“This generation is naturally more comfortable with technology but has also been exposed to a much broader set of ways to pay,” Paysafe Group CEO Philip McHugh said. “Accepting new payment types and expecting lots of flexibility and ease will be table stakes going forward.”