What comes to mind when you think of Italy? Pizza, pasta, Ferrari, long white-chalk roads winding their way over rolling Tuscan hills? What about Bitcoin? Because it seems Italians are quite keen on using the cryptocurrency for online payments.
According to a recent report by marketing analysis firm SEMRush, Bitcoin is the third most popular method for online payments in Italy. It comes in behind payment processor PayPal and Italian prepaid cash card provider PostePay.
It’s important to point out that the study included payments made using Visa debit or MasterCards through PayPal, as PayPal payments. If these weren’t included under PayPal, it’s quite possible that Bitcoin wouldn’t make the top five.
On average, Bitcoin is used more than 215,800 times each month. American Express is used only 189,000 times. Other credit cards such as Visa and MasterCard are reportedly only used for direct payments 33,950 times each month.
Perhaps what’s a more logical explanation is that Italians really love PayPal. The well-known online payment provider is, on average, reportedly used more than 1,383,000 times each month.
On average, PostePay is used 1,175,000 each month. These figures are based on a survey carried out between October 2018 and September 2019.. These figures are based on period surveyed between October 2018 and September 2019.
What exactly Italians are buying with Bitcoin remains unclear, though. There are many websites and ecommerce platforms that accept Bitcoin as payment, but recent trends would suggest that these services are rarely used. In many cases websites are even removing support for payments in the cryptocurrency.
H/T – Decrypt
Get the TNW newsletter
Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.