Flipkart, India's largest e-commerce company by sales, has said it will be accepting Bitcoin payments in what many suspect is an April Fools’ Day prank. In an announcement on Twitter today at 11:30 pm India Standard Time, Flipkart said it would be accepting Bitcoin (BTC) “as a convenient mode of payment” for its online marketplace. However, many users have refused to accept the e-commerce company’s seemingly pro-crypto stance given the timing — at the time of publication, it is already April Fools’ Day in India. The future is here. We now accept Bitcoin as a convenient mode of payment. Update …

A blockchain marketplace app is taking on the likes of eBay, Amazon and Depop — and is vowing to give back to buyers and sellers alike. Curate is designed to deliver an all-in-one experience for online shopping. As well as supporting credit and debit cards and transactions via PayPal, purchases can also be made using Bitcoin, Ether and Curate tokens. One of the project’s main goals is to deliver a fairer deal to merchants who are dealing with razor-thin profit margins. Through Curate, a flat 4% commission will be charged on sales — far less than the fees charged by …

OLB Group (OLB), a New York-based e-commerce merchant service provider, is making it easier for businesses to accept cryptocurrency payments. OLB’s more than 8,500 merchants are now able to accept Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), USDC and DAI at the point-of-sale through the company’s OmniSoft business management platform. Customers wishing to pay with cryptocurrency in-store or through their mobile phones can simply elect to do so with their cryptocurrency wallets. All payments are processed through SecurePay, a payment gateway that authenticates the transaction, converts the cryptocurrency to U.S. dollars and approves the final sale. The decision to integrate cryptocurrency payments was …

Decentralization is not a luxury; it is a necessity. In a prescient article in The Atlantic back in 2012, science fiction writer Bruce Sterling referred to the likes of Amazon, Facebook and Google as “The Stacks,” predicting the insidious power grab that has happened in the last decade. As the giant tech companies consume more and more of our lives, the fact that technologies that enable us to push back against them are being developed is not only encouraging: it is essential. Since Bitcoin (BTC) began the process of decentralizing payments in 2010, we have seen the process of disintermediation …

Decentralized finance and shopping seem like an unusual combination at first. How can liquidity pools help you save money at the till? But scratch a little deeper and some compelling use cases for DeFi emerge. With the retail sector suffering through one of the most challenging times seen in a generation, here are the main issues facing e-commerce right now… and how DeFi could fix them. A match made in heaven? The likes of Amazon, eBay and Shopify have transformed the way we buy everyday items. Now, anyone can become a merchant — and once exotic products can be delivered …

Boson Protocol, a project that seeks to connect the real world of physical commerce to smart contracts, announced a successful $350,000 investment round on Monday. The project is creating the “building blocks for next-gen dCommerce apps” by providing a way to redeem blockchain tokens for their real-world physical counterpart. The project received an oversubscribed investment round led by Outlier Ventures, joined by Ocean Protocol’s Trent McConaghy and others. The funding will be used primarily for operational costs and building a working pilot, the company said. Justin Banon, the project’s founder, told Cointelegraph that the purpose of Boson is “enabling decentralized …

A perennial question surrounding blockchain technology is: When will it make a mainstream impact? Understandably, enthusiasts in the industry are anxious to see this technology live up to its promise of empowering consumers, accelerating cross-border payments and bridging the financial inclusion gap for the under- and unbanked. The reality is that today, its scope is limited. From what little data we have available about cryptocurrency adoption, we see that the pool of active users is relatively small in size and scope — largely millennial and largely male. Related: Crypto could save millennials from the economy that failed them Some countries …

A company that provides Bitcoin payments says it aims to usher Africa into a new digital age and deliver a compelling alternative to fiat currencies. Patricia, a financial solutions business based in Lagos, Nigeria began as a straightforward e-commerce startup. Now, the platform has gone global, and the company estimates that more than 300,000 people use its services to meet their everyday needs. The company also has offices in Ghana, the United Kingdom and the United States. The team behind Patricia uses the power of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology to create alternative solutions to existing financial infrastructure, enabling consumers to …

Chinese content generation platform TikTok, a video-sharing app that has been called the fastest-growing social networking service in history, has been in the spotlight since early 2019 and now surpasses 800 million users. Despite the fact that the app’s data security breaches are raising controversy worldwide, more and more young people are using it as the go-to social media for the new generation, with a reported 69% of TikTok’s global audience being between the ages of 16 and 24. Despite its overwhelming success and rapidly growing user base, the truth behind the worldwide sensation is that “the new Instagram" is …

Amazon-owned streaming platform Twitch appears to be ramping up its crypto strategy. The site, which focuses primarily on video game livestreaming, is now offering users a 10% subscription discount when paying with cryptocurrency through the platform’s payment processor, BitPay. BitPay’s chief marketing officer, Bill Zielke, told Cointelegraph that out of the thousands of merchants the company works with, Twitch is the first major global brand to offer a crypto-based promotion. Zielke added: “We are seeing more online merchants interested in using crypto as a promotional payment form, which is exciting since most marketing payment options are mainly reserved for alternative …

The world has been slowly recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, while some countries are bracing themselves for a potential second wave, but the economic downturn in many fields is imminent. This has spurred debates on the current model of a cash-based society, which claim that it had become outdated long before the crisis struck the world. The coronavirus has arguably accelerated the transition to digital cash and cryptocurrency adoption across the globe. The tradition of using fiat currency has been on a path toward becoming obsolete, and cash as a financial instrument is about to become a relic of the …

World’s top ecommerce firm, Amazon, filed a patent for a blockchain system that tracks goods as they move on the supply chain. Amazon’s patent — dated May 26 — describes a “distributed ledger certification” system. The document explains that the tracking solution would ensure that consumer goods that are sold on its ecommerce site are authentic. The abstract reads: “Features are disclosed for an interface for verifiable tracking of an item through a supply chain using a distributed electronic ledger.” In the detailed description section of the patent, its author explains that the system at large aims to improve “trust …