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The Digital Dilemma for Crypto: How to Unleash the Blocks in the Chains

By Alex Zeltcer, CEO and Co-Founder at nSure.ai

Digital transformations occur when existing technologies and tools hold back growth. Digital processes simplify tracking, eliminate errors, and save time and money. They enable automation and ensure compliance with international standards. When viewed through that lens, it is surprising that cryptocurrency has struggled to gain much wider acceptance in today’s economy.

Despite the strong desire to speed and simplify transactions anywhere, or the significant media attention given to cryptocurrency, its adoption is actually relatively small. The total crypto market is worth an estimated $1.15 trillion, or about 0.8% of the world’s currency. An estimated 300 million people are using cryptocurrencies today, which seems like a lot until you realize it is less than 4% of the global population.

Another compelling motivator would be that fiat currencies are frequently at risk of devaluing. In January of this year, Lebanon depreciated its currency by 90%. Over the last half-century, we’ve seen a number of government-initiated currency deflations. These types of actions should erode confidence in government-issued currencies.

Between the hype and the serious motivations to adopt crypto, we haven’t seen an onboarding of mass scale. Clearly, some ideal market conditions are there, so what is holding it back?

Three Roadblocks To Cryptocurrency

There are plenty of people who aren’t interested in cryptocurrency at this time. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt – coupled with negative stories surrounding failed companies like Celsius and FTX – are keeping some people away.

However, even those who are interested in trying it are finding their path blocked. There are essentially three checkpoints on the path to cryptocurrency adoption that eliminate 60% of the interested market—nearly all of these roadblocks center on fraud concerns and overzealous fraud prevention activities.

1. Unnecessary Friction

When consumers want to purchase cryptocurrency, they have to go to a cryptocurrency exchange. They choose their crypto-wallet, but before they can make their initial purchase, they are asked to provide KYC (Know Your Customer) information.

KYC is important legislation in the fight against money laundering. It helps prevent weapons financing, human trafficking, and terror financing. However, there are regulatory guidelines that define minimum values before KYC steps are required (e.g., USD$ 3,000 or 2,500€). Most first-time crypto-purchasers are looking to buy only $100-$500 worth of cryptocurrency, far below the threshold for KYC. This unnecessary friction in the process actually stops 25% of potential crypto users from moving forward with their purchases.

2. Payment Networks

Payment networks, like Visa and Mastercard, are associating a high level of risk for all transactions to purchase cryptocurrency. The average payment rejection rate for e-commerce is about 10%. That jumps to 25% for consumers who want to purchase cryptocurrency.

For the cryptocurrency market, this is quite significant. After losing 25% of its potential market to users who walked away from an unnecessary KYC process, 25% of those who remained were turned away by credit card companies.

3. Payment Fraud Prevention Software

Crypto exchanges fraud teams and third-party fraud prevention companies add an additional layer of fraud protection for all transactions to protect against chargebacks. These fraud detection platforms review transactions in real-time and determine whether or not to approve the transaction.

Of the transaction attempts that get past Visa and Mastercard’s initial review, another 25% are turned down due to concerns of fraud.

When taken together, these three checkpoints eliminate approximately 60% of new crypto users. It unnecessarily limits the crypto-marketplace and forces users to continue using government-issued fiat.

Unleashing Chains, Onboarding Masses

Every day, thousands of interested cryptocurrency users run into unnecessary friction and are turned away at these three checkpoints. Until those issues are resolved, it’s going to be challenging to reach widespread adoption.

However, part of the issue stems from the different tools being deployed at each checkpoint. KYC is an important regulatory tool in the physical world. However, it is often misapplied in the digital world and far too easy to be faked. Verified KYC accounts sell for $50-$150 on the dark web. As you might expect, purchases stemming from those accounts are oftentimes fraudulent.

A fraud prevention solution that was built for high-risk domains like crypto can make all the difference. nSure.ai is a world leader in AI-powered advanced fraud prevention for high-risk digital transactions – they specialize in this unique domain. nSure.ai has a sole focus: to significantly lift approval rates and bring net new customers and revenue to merchants and exchanges. With nSure.ai, crypto exchanges don’t have to worry about their fraud operations because nsure.ai assumes full liability for all chargebacks, regardless of the reason. No need to fret about fraud, no manual review, and no chargeback fees.

Moreover, Unregulated user friction is mostly made for user verification, and nSure.ai’s studies show that in crypto, user verification doesn’t work. Even worse, it creates significant user abandonment. No friction means happier customers, elevated conversion rates & augmented LTV.

nSure.ai is proven to lift approval rates from a range of 75%-85% to a 90%-95% range. Given significantly more than half of these transactions are typically from new vs. existing customers, it’s both the current and the repeat sales that factor into your net gains from nSure.ai fraud prevention.

Merchants can also regain lost revenue caused by false positives and churn thanks to dedicated AI models. The models are built and optimized on the crypto exchange’s data, behavioral analytics, and supervised as well as unsupervised AI. They detect anomalies in the entire traffic activity (i.e., unlike legacy fraud protection which is typically reliant on identity verification and built for e-commerce physical goods).

If you want to explore new markets and develop new products confidently without have to worry about high chargeback rates or being sent to the payment networks monitoring plan, dive into the recent case study with a leading crypto exchange.


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