The market for digital payments is enormous — and growing.
Against a backdrop of $1.9T in global digital payments revenue last year, consultants McKinsey, Accenture and Deloitte released reports outlining the rise in digital payments and the need for modernizing global financial infrastructure. Industry leaders like PayPal, Square and Visa launched significant cryptocurrency-related initiatives in the same year.
This is great news for Zcash.
As the global economy shifts ever-faster into a digital-first, interconnected, always-online marketplace, we at ECC are excited about the strategic opportunities for Zcash.
Zcash vs. other payment options
Digital payments — crypto and otherwise — need to be fast, affordable, confidential and inclusive. Many projects succeed in delivering some of these benefits, but payment infrastructure needs to meet all four of these requirements in order to facilitate a fair and open global economy.
When compared to other financial tools, Zcash offers competitive, if not superior, benefits in each of these categories.
Payments need to be (1) fast and (2) affordable: Zcash has faster block times than Bitcoin (75 seconds vs 10 mins). When compared to Bitcoin and Ethereum, Zcash has lower fees (default 0.00001 ZEC) and larger block sizes (2 MB).
| Transaction speed | Transaction fees* | Block size | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zcash | ~75 secs per block, 4.5 tx per block, capacity of up to 500 (fully shield) – 2000 (all transparent) tx per block | $0.05 Avg fee (Mar-May) = 0.0002 | 2 MB |
| Bitcoin | ~10 mins per block, 2000 tx per block (avg) | $23.06 Avg fee (Mar-May) = 0.0005 BTC | 1 MB |
| Ethereum | ~15 secs per block, 200 tx per block (source) | $18.89 Avg fee (Mar-May) = 0.0053 ETH | 30 KB |
* 90-day moving average tx fee, Source: CoinMetrics
(3) Transaction confidentiality is critical: Confidentiality ensures businesses can retain their competitive advantage. It keeps consumer data out of the hands of foreign governments, and it comes in handy when you’re buying Mom a surprise for her birthday. Physical cash is private by default, but cash penetration is on the decline globally. With Bitcoin and Ethereum, 100 percent of transactions are visible on a public ledger. With Zcash, people have the option to transact privately using a shielded address. With Zcash, your information is in your control. You can minimize the amount of information leakage related to your transaction.
(4) Inclusiveness is a key to scalability: Inclusiveness is generally defined as availability and access to financial services. For this reason, open-source, decentralized cryptocurrencies are regarded as more inclusive than traditional financial tools. Currencies like Zcash, Bitcoin and Ethereum are borderless and more resistant to censorship than services like PayPal or Visa, which are blocked in certain regions. ECC and other organizations share responsibility for Zcash development, meaning developers and users around the world can contribute to the growth of the ecosystem.
Zcash is primed for greater adoption
Zcash offers features and momentum that make it uniquely suited for digital payments.
Not only is it fast, affordable, confidential and inclusive, Zcash is also compatible with many major financial regulations — including guidelines from FATF, the global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog. ECC regularly engages with and has seen Zcash approval from regulatory organizations like NYDFS.
With broad support across a variety of partners, Zcash is an option in each of these use cases:
- P2P payments — Zcash is available on a wide variety of digital wallets and P2P marketplaces such as AirTM
- E-commerce — Moon
- Mobile payments — Flexa, Gemini Pay
A community-favorite feature is Zcash’s encrypted memo field for transactions between shielded addresses. This allows individuals to add fully encrypted messages to their transactions. Whether you’re sending a love note or a business memo, you should get to decide who sees it and who doesn’t.
Learn more
Zcash is private, fast, flexible and accessible to everyone. It’s built for the digital age. Learn more about how to pay with Zcash, and if you have a quick minute, we’d love your thoughts on Zcash for digital payments in this super short, anonymous survey.
