Visa 2025 global ecommerce report: payment merchants remain reluctant to embrace cryptocurrency

Posted: 29/10/2025

Earlier this year, Visa, in collaboration with the Merchant Risk Council or MRC, published its 2025 Global eCommerce Payments & Fraud Report, revealing a sharp rise in post-purchase fraud, a growing adoption of real-time payments and a shift in how merchants worldwide are balancing security with customer experience. 

The report is drawn from over 1,000 merchants across 38 countries. The take-home message for crypto and fintech businesses is that merchants remain reluctant to accept cryptocurrency payments and continue to grapple with its security implications. However, that is not to say merchants are ignoring new technologies as many are now embracing AI-driven tools for fraud-prevention.

Merchants across the board offer a limited set of tender types. They all accept card, digital wallets and bank transfers but only approximately 10% of merchants accept cryptocurrency at checkout. That makes cryptocurrency the least accepted payment method overall among the surveyed merchants, even lagging behind fiat (which plummeted in its acceptance by 10% since 2024). That also means that very few new merchants have decided to onboard cryptocurrency since previous years. Preferences at checkout remain outcome-driven as merchants steer their customers toward certain methods which lower payment-fraud risk and reduce processing costs. 

By contrast, real-time payments (RTPs) are on a clear upward trajectory. Thirty seven per cent of merchants already accept RTP and among those adopters, about 79% saw usage increase over the last year and 87% expect further growth next year.

RTPs offer merchants and customers near-instantaneous transfers of sums between accounts which can be done any time 24/7 so it is not surprising that they are so popular. 

A large share of non-adopters indicate they are looking to add RTP in the near future. If crypto payments are to achieve more mainstream adoption, they will have to credibly compete with RTP on ease of use and minimise chance of fraud exposure and end-to-end costs. While many blockchain-based currencies rely on robust cryptographic standards like SHA-256, offering 256-bit security, cryptocurrencies still face reputational challenges. 

Their association with cybercrime and anonymous transactions continues to fuel public scepticism. Until that perception shifts and tangible steps are taken to reduce user-end vulnerabilities, the broader acceptance of crypto payments in business to customer transactions may remain limited.

So what are the vulnerabilities in the way merchants currently work? Turning to the report's general findings, fraud remains a prevalent issue. The top five attacks globally are refund/policy abuse, RTP fraud, phishing/pharming/whaling, first-party misuse and card testing, each affecting roughly one-third to nearly one-half of merchants. RTP fraud is in the lead affecting almost half of merchants. 

North American merchants are more likely to suffer RTP fraud, while refund and policy abuse are the leading problems in Asia and Latin America. For crypto payments, the practical point is that merchant attention is also on post-purchase and policy-driven losses not just fraud at the payment authorisation stage. A checkout system that prevents chargebacks does not, by itself, address disputes rooted in fulfilment or policy abuse. 

Merchants report persistent fraud management challenges and plan to invest accordingly and 63% expect to increase investment in tools and technologies. They are prioritising new solutions over new staff: 19% expect to decrease spending on fraud management staff/talent in the next two years. Solutions that lower cost and reduce manual review are explicitly in scope for the near future. It stands to reason the solutions to crypto payments' fraud risk (such as on-chain exposure heuristics) will be evaluated on that same basis. 

Overall, it is clear that in mainstream eCommerce, crypto payments remain a minority tender compared to other new methods like RTP. The merchants in this report reward systems that reduce fraud risk and processing cost, and minimise operational inefficiencies. Digital-asset offerings that can be shown to meet those tests may earn merchants' trust and eventually be more widely accepted at checkout.

Return to news headlines