In recent years, cryptocurrency has gained popularity as an investment opportunity and alternative payment method. Now, businesses are exploring new ways to integrate digital assets into their business models. One such way is offering customer rebates and rewards in the form of cryptocurrency like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) without ever buying or holding crypto.
What are crypto offers for customers?
Instead of offering cashback rebates or loyalty points, a growing number of future-facing businesses are leveraging cryptocurrency. Businesses can use crypto to connect with their customers in multiple ways:
- Rebates: Incentivize customers to purchase high ticket items with rebates in the form of cryptocurrency.
- Rewards: Customers accrue cryptocurrency for every purchase made, which can then be spent with the merchant on future purchases.
- Refunds: Businesses can refund customers with cryptocurrency directly to their wallets when returning products.
Benefits of integrating crypto into customer rewards and rebate programs
The number one draw of integrating crypto into a customer loyalty or rebate program is connecting with a unique customer base: the crypto consumer. As shown in a recent study, crypto users are often younger, digitally-savvy and high-income consumers earning more than $100,000. They are also highly passionate – about the digital economy, blockchain technology, their preferred coins and about merchants who embrace crypto payments. Cryptocurrency can not only act as a means of incentivizing this loyal customer base, but also modernizing a brand for the digital economy of the future.
Offering cryptocurrency in place of traditional fiat rebates or loyalty cash can also lower operating costs, notably if your business caters to customers across the world. Cryptocurrency was designed for low-cost, instant transactions across geographic borders. Issuing crypto rewards can be faster and cheaper than legacy payment providers.
Crypto rebates and rewards can be offered to customers regardless of the payment method used. Some customers may prefer to pay with a credit card and receive rewards or rebates in crypto. This can be an especially attractive option for the savvy consumer to receive reward points from their credit card provider and crypto rewards from merchants.
Crypto rebates in action
Eight Sleep, the world's first sleep fitness company, leveraged BitPay Send to offer cryptocurrency rebates to its customers. As a result of the crypto-focused promotion, Eight Sleep had one of its strongest sales periods year-to-date, right up there with Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
“Very high engagement, great adoption. It was beyond what we were expecting — and we’re definitely going to bring back offers such as the crypto rebates.”
- Alexandra Zatarain
Co-founder and Vice President of Brand and Marketing, Eight Sleep
Getting started with crypto rebates and rewards
Integrating cryptocurrency into customer incentive programs is easy, even with no prior crypto experience. Set up is quick and requires little technical implementation resources.
You can choose to run all crypto transactions through a proprietary wallet (known as a “hands-on” approach). However, much more common and efficient is partnering with a trusted cryptocurrency payment processor. Instead of managing and making payments in crypto, merchants instead fund an account with fiat currency. BitPay handles all cryptocurrency conversion and ensures payments are sent to the customer wallets. You never hold cryptocurrency or have to deal with the chore of buying and securely storing their funds.
BitPay has over a decade of expertise helping merchants of all sizes and industries integrate cryptocurrency into their workflows. Contact BitPay to learn more about integrating crypto payments into your customer incentive programs and other areas of your organization.