Web3 Payments: The In-Depth Guide for Consumer Brands
Consumer brands need a seamless multi-option payment system to satisfy customers and create a high-quality experience.
Web3 payments are growing in demand as consumers crave alternate options to purchase and engage with brands. These modernized payments involve AML/KYC compliance, digital wallets, blockchain, smart contracts, crypto, and dozens of tools to create a web3 ecosystem.
But here's the good news: With Mojito, brands easily accept payments with traditional methods like credit cards or bank information, alongside web3 digital payments. Mojito brings it all together so you can increase sales and meet customer demand without stress.
Right now, brands have the opportunity to become pioneers in the consumer web3 shift. Customers can pay how they want—whether with a credit card or a cryptocurrency like Ethereum.
Together, we'll dive into the uniqueness of web3 payments, blockchain and crypto, benefits, and how to integrate web3 no matter your adoption stage.
Unpacking web3 payments
Web3 digital payments are one component of the web3 ecosystem. Web3 is considered the third iteration of the internet.
Three phases were built on top of each other to create an immersive internet:
Web1: This was the read stage. You could get information from a web page or use the internet as a reference.
Web2: The "write and publish" stage gave everyone the power to engage with each other through social media and other platforms that presented everyone with their own corner of the internet.
Web3: The phase we find ourselves in today is about digital ownership. Internet users can create something and own it as an asset. They can pay for products through various digital currencies.
The best brands have nurtured and serviced their customers through every iteration of the internet. Because of this, they became (and many remain) the biggest movers in the market.
Web3 ownership has the following characteristics:
1. New revenue streams
When customers buy a digital good from your brand, it's theirs. But for the first time, brands can add a new revenue stream through the re-sale of their digital goods.
If a customer wants to resell an NFT you minted, you can earn a percentage in royalties. Also, if someone sells an item in your marketplace (Mojito can power this with our white-label solution), you can receive a portion of the transaction.
2. Audit capability
Brands build their reputations on quality and customer experience (creating trust). It's vital to develop a payment environment that's transparent and secure for traditional and web3 payments.
Web3 technologies provide transparency, automation, and audit capabilities. When someone makes a transaction, like a web3 payment or transfer of ownership, it’s recorded on a public ledger—the blockchain.
If it’s a digital asset like an NFT (non-fungible token), it has a unique identifier tied to you until you sell it. Since this is public information, everyone knows what data is shared and can verify its authenticity.
This allows brands and consumers to trace the provenance and transaction history of digital assets. This offers a safer and more transparent form of ecommerce.
Not only are these benefits good for consumers, but they also add additional levels of safety and better responsibility standards for brands interacting with their customers and communities.
Smart contract automation also helps save operational time, cost, and labor.
3. Digital ownership for customers
Thanks to the blockchain (a public ledger), platforms can integrate themselves with it, and users can ideally maneuver between spaces and apps. Consumers can own their digital assets outright.
For example, customers can purchase your NFT in a marketplace with Mojito’s white-label solution. Since the token, provenance, and transaction are recorded on the blockchain, consumers own it no matter what marketplace they bought it from (like with a physical purchase).
Customers don't need a credit card company, the merchant bank, or the bank to communicate. Instead, they can transact directly with you—the merchant—and have immediate ownership.
Everyone saves on fees and once that payment is sent, you don’t have to worry about chargebacks or losing on completed sales. Mojito makes the payment and integration experience easy and user-friendly, like the internet experience everyone loves today.
More importantly, brands prevent becoming obsolete (like the iPhone apps Apple created that replaced everyday necessities) and can instead become definitive leaders in the market.
4. Community and culture
Through token-gated access (when customers have exclusive access to a community, rewards, virtual events, or physical events because of NFT or similar ownership within your brand project), they can join other passionate customers and invest in your brand.
Web3 cultural identity plays a huge role. It’s the idea of freedom over your digital assets and data, fostering creativity and innovation. Web3 payments facilitate the buy-in as customers want to grow closer to your brand.
5. Fast payments
Since web3 payment infrastructures do not rely on a centralized bank or intermediaries, the transactions settle immediately.
Faster transactions provide multiple benefits to both the brand and the consumer. The first is better cash flow. Businesses have more control over their funds, with faster payments arriving in their accounts.
Another plus is a smoother experience. Customers can get their asset or reward as soon as they purchase it without waiting for delayed funds or a slow system.
Faster payments create a real-time approach to transactions to improve security, asset delivery, and overall experience.
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The role of blockchain and cryptocurrency in web3 payments
As you develop your web3 payment solution, you’ll quickly need to align significant pieces of the web3 ecosystem. Like a machine, you cannot rely on one part to get the job done. Each piece should flow together, operating seamlessly.
Smart contracts and web3 technologies unite to make this possible.
Expanding your capabilities to web3 is not about choosing it over web2. It's about adding support for the growing demand onto your existing infrastructure.
Mojito simplifies everything, supports the entire web3 ecosystem, and integrates with the tools you already use. You don't have to worry about the complexities of web3 or changing your system altogether. Instead, you can benefit from expanding your payment capabilities through solutions that make it easy and familiar for everyone.
Smart contracts
Brands can place parameters on a digital contract for transactions that remove intermediaries and risky anomalies.
For example, when someone purchases an NFT from your brand, a smart contract kicks in, recording it on the blockchain and transferring funds and ownership. Web3 transactions can be predictable and secure thanks to smart contract technology.
Web3 payments encompass these facets of the ecosystem, along with others, to ensure successful transactions and user experiences.
Brands can also use this to pay vendors or any party, especially if it's related to a sale when people should get a percentage of the proceeds. They can easily write that into a smart contract for immediate execution.
Credit cards and traditional payment options
Web3 doesn't have to feel new and doesn't need a learning curve. If brands partner with a SaaS like Mojito, they can easily connect the familiar web experience with the future.
Customers can pay with credit cards, wires/ACH, or digital methods like Apple Pay and still reap the web3 benefits.
Mojito connects the two building blocks of the internet and integrates the payment and experience.
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Fundamental advantages of web3 payments
As brands incorporate web3 payments, they can utilize several benefits for their operations:
1. Multi-payment inclusivity
Web3 payments give everyone more access to valuable digital goods. If customers want to pay with different cryptocurrencies, they can. If customers wish to pay with local currency or digital payments via Apple Pay/Google Pay, they can do that, too.
Customers can pay however they want through a traditional checkout experience. That means brands can benefit from increased sales and opportunities by meeting everyone's needs within web3.
The best part? Brands can use the tools they have today. Mojito's solution integrates and works with your web2 infrastructure. You can scale and grow with your customers as consumer web3 demand builds.
2. Royalty payments
Brands can utilize web3 payments for royalties. This is a significant innovation for companies. They can use smart contracts to set up automatic parameters.
For example, if there is a collaboration, let's say, between a brand and a high-profile artist, you split royalties based on your agreement. Additionally, if someone resells a digital asset on any onchain marketplace, you can get a royalty from that sale.
Royalties create a new revenue stream for brands with long-term ROI potential.
3. Token gating opportunities
Token gating creates value for customers by offering limited-access benefits, like private communities, events, or additional assets. Only owners of the token can access these perks.
Brands can use token gating in connection to their web3 payments strategy to increase customer engagement and add new sales opportunities.
For example, when Mojito partnered with the Tampa Bay Rowdies for an immersive fan experience, they knew token gating would offer the perfect solution.
Mojito facilitated the Rowdies Digital Pass creation. Season ticket holders could claim their NFT (the digital pass) and use it for 20% off discounts for food and drinks and select retail locations. The majority of season ticket holders jumped in. They loved the chance to experience innovative tech and join a membership community with their soccer team.
Because of the success of the digital pass, the Rowdies verified onchain and offchain customer engagement data during their games, offering a valuable source to fuel their strategy and growth.
Bridging the web2 and web3 payment gap
Each web version is a building block, and brands have the opportunity to lead in web3. If they're too late, other brands will facilitate customer needs. Instead, if a brand takes hold of the reigns, it can process diverse customer payments, no matter what they are, and attract new consumers.
Source: Google Trends
In the last year alone, “crypto” has generated as much interest as “social media”—sometimes more. As these interests continue to spike, it hints at the incoming need for web3, online communities, and a desire for alternative payment methods. Brands can bridge the gap between these two trends and offer a solution.
What’s surprising about these two terms is how prevalent social media has become in the last fifteen years. If web3 concepts (especially relating to finances) are just as popular, brands need to consider their response just as they did when they invested in social media platforms.
Not everyone uses web3 features, but it continues to grow and will become the primary way we use the internet. Leaders can adopt the infrastructure to support prior web uses while also providing a robust web3 solution to lead the market and support customers.
The right web3 payment processing solution can reconcile the divide by servicing everyone, no matter where they are in the web3 journey.
It’s all in the same place and done super fast. For example, Mojito makes it easy for users to buy your brand's NFT with a credit card. In seconds, they can connect their card, and Mojito’s technology facilitates the switch to the appropriate cryptocurrency to make the purchase.
Payment solutions should also offer many relevant integrations that combine web2 legacy tools with the web3 apps, marketplaces, and solutions customers use.
How Mojito enables brands to confidently & securely utilize web3 payments
Mojito offers the most scalable, seamless web3 payment experience available for enterprise brands and customers.
It’s user-friendly, so anyone can make a web3 purchase for the first time while providing the complex and necessary tools required for brands to fully utilize web3.
Brands don’t have to do guesswork or deploy crazy resources to conquer the new web. Mojito’s web3 payment solutions include the best tools for wallets, NFTs, marketplaces, CRMs, and everything you need for a successful web3 launch.
Navigating compliance, legal, and tax
Mojito empowers all your customers to participate with the ability to accept traditional payments like credit cards, wires, Apple Pay, and crypto payment options.
Mojito also provides a user-friendly crypto-paying experience and makes the experience much safer for brands.
As a Merchant of Record, Mojito handles compliance, tax, fraud detection risk, and troubleshooting. With its payment mixer, businesses can introduce quick and convenient transactions to enhance customer satisfaction and drive revenue.
We are OFAC, KYC/AML compliant and ensure brands are protected from fraud.
Customers don’t have to worry about a complex journey as they purchase an asset or join a community with your brand. Mojito makes it easy to participate as a web2 user or one that is fully web3 knowledgeable.
Instead of worrying about risks and complexities, Mojito can create a better experience. Your brand can build your community, energize your passionate customers, and create a web3 experience that grows your company.
You can try the demo today or learn more and see how Mojito can help your brand win web3 and the future of payments.
Remember: As your customers join the greatest internet innovation of their time, you want to be there, doors wide open.
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Adopting the Avatar: the Core of Consumer Customization
A brief playbook for brands building for the digitally-native generation.
According to McKinsey, fashion companies are expected to double their investment in technology by 2023. This statistic was one of many released during 2021's digital assets boom, revealing an important truth: consumers — and especially Gen Z — care deeply about owning their digital identities. In the two years since "NFT Summer," we've learned a lot about the evolution of consumer habits in digitally-native spaces. These insights can help guide the future of how brands operate and consumers engage in virtual environments.
As a short follow-up to our last blog post on how web3 is driving a return to the internet's golden age of customization, we're sharing some additional thoughts on how you can build for the next wave of consumer adoption. This evolution is already showing signs of incredible value for forward-thinking brands like Gucci, Valentino, L'Oréal, Adidas, Nike, and many more.
Web3 Returns the Internet to the Golden Age of Customization
This is what it feels like when the future enables what so many users loved most about the past.
MySpace, StumbleUpon, GeoCities, LiveJournal, Tumblr — the early internet thrived on user-driven, customizable experiences that, while rudimentary in design, clunky in function, and altogether useless for major brands (i.e., not monetizable or targettable), offered humans some of the earliest opportunities for representing themselves online.
Two decades later, across multiple transformational eras of the internet (more on this below), what can we learn from these now archaic — and predominantly extinct — platforms? To start, let's set the stage of the golden age of the web and the subsequent erosion of online customization that followed.
These early platforms referenced above were among the first to offer users a customizable digital sandbox that lacked the restrictions — and intrusive, expensive, increasingly ineffective advertising practices — that is now commonplace across tech. These were platforms on which people created, not platforms on which products were sold.
FAANG companies undoubtedly standardized the internet user experience. These companies built easier ways for people to create and disseminate information while creating the ability for the world's biggest brands to reach these new, content-craving audiences through new experiences and digitally-native business models. However, FAANG-style companies have also contributed to the flattening of the once-loved, now-nostalgic digital aesthetic, eliminating (or narrowing) users' ability to find customization online.
Example: go to StumbleUpon right now, and you'll just get dragged between identical Pinterest boards.
Implementing Web3 CRM: Wallets Are the New Email Address
How to Implement Web3 CRM for Consumers
Your customer relationship management system is your business's beating heart. It’s how you nurture customers, track vital information, and make strategic decisions.
Now that web3 has entered the fold, traditional CRMs can be augmented. So the question is this: Is your brand prepared for it? And what does the future look like?
Brands can expand upon their CRM data with wallets and token interactions to build loyalty in the changing digital economy.
If your CRM is the heart, what happens if it can't support your entire customer base along with their actions and interests? Consumers are adopting web3, and you want to be there from the start.
And with increasingly more limitations on what consumer data brands can collect, store, and use, along with apps and systems that don't talk to each other, brands miss out on data everywhere.
You need web3 CRM capability to connect wallets and token usage to your web2 data to accurately paint a picture of your customers.
Enhancing your CRM with web3, you can track and reward engagement across virtually any physical or digital touchpoint and connect it all in one place to analyze and manage.
Onboarding customers to create web3 wallets is the first step to getting started. The good news is that, with Mojito, the process is seamless for new users. They can set it up and manage it with an email address. In many ways, wallets have become the new email address, offering more benefits for customers and providing brands with the holistic data and CRM capabilities they need.
Mojito's web3 CRM collects and pulls all these moving pieces from different parts of the web together to create one remarkably effortless customer experience.
In this article, we’ll compare the differences between a web2 and web3 CRM, the benefits of using a web3 CRM, and how Mojito might be the right fit.
What’s the difference between web2 and web3 CRM?
The CRMs most brands use do not facilitate the needs that web3 has—the biggest one being connecting offchain and onchain data and creating an integrated portrait of customers across all physical and online interactions.
Web2 CRMs provide essential data and communication tools to manage emails, SMS lists, social media followers, eCommerce buyers, event attendees, and more.
But it's difficult to connect every data source you'd like to trigger into your web2 CRM, let alone add new data sources in web3.
Brands can instead use a web3 solution to augment their CRM by connecting data sources in a different way that brings everything together. Companies can create the most connected, data-rich CRM they've ever had.
Brands require CRM solutions to capture the entire customer data picture across both the internet and real-life experiences. In turn, they create a community-driven customer base, increase sales, and use their CRM for better connections, communication, and data.
Wallets are the new email addresses
It's no secret that brands are losing data through their traditional channels. Big Tech companies are reigning in how much data you have access to, like Apple limiting cookies, and how brands now get an incomplete picture of their customers.
Additionally, as customers interact with web3, your brand is in the dark until you establish web3 CRM capability.
Web3 wallet addresses are unique identifiers for users on the blockchain. Their address is recorded when they purchase an asset or trigger activity on the chain. With Mojito, onchain and real-life interactions join together in one familiar experience.
As your customers interact with your brand and create or log in with their wallets, you can associate that with their customer profile.
When a customer logs in on your profile manager, they can add their web3 address, resulting in a holistic view of your customer.
This is a huge opportunity for first-party data. Your brand can get direct analytics from your activities through a verified, authentic process supported by onchain and offchain interactions.
Wallet addresses offer a more reliable and extensive way to gather data on customer behavior, help drive engagement, and make better growth decisions.
Cookies are the new NFTs
While traditional solutions suffer from increasingly limited access to cookies, web3 offers brands a bright and better future.
NFTs are non-fungible tokens. A non-fungible token is a digital asset recorded on a public decentralized ledger called a blockchain. It can be verifiably owned and impossible to forge.
NFTs make it possible for someone to digitally own an asset, which has changed the future of technology. But it also provides a unique opportunity for web3 CRMs, engagement, and data.
"NFTs: your ticket into a brand's action." — Michael Litman
Dynamic NFTs utilize live metadata to gather customer information and drive engagement.
Before solutions like Mojito's Dynamic NFT, non-fungible tokens didn't change. And why should they? People wanted a unique digital asset that would last forever and retain or grow in long-term value.
But as web3 matured, so did the perspective on NFTs.
What if the value of an NFT was change?
For example, artists began to experiment as they created NFTs. They would explain that the NFT would change and evolve. This in itself made it valuable and rose in popularity.
Brands would learn how to use it for data and supercharge engagement only a short time later. Traditionally, metadata remained static, but now Dynamic NFTs update metadata based on consumer behavior.
Brands can leverage metadata in many use cases:
Loyalty programs: Customers can join membership communities when they purchase a digital pass with Mojito's traditional, familiar checkout experience. Every time they interact with your brand across any first-party or third-party platform, like redeeming rewards or visiting an event, their token metadata is updated and fed back into your CRM.
Exclusive access: Brands can implement token gating, limiting access to your brand's NFT or memberships. Gate websites, apps, events, games, and more. When customers check in, their activity becomes trackable.
Enhanced membership and subscriptions: Dynamic NFTs allow brands to sell time-access passes with expiration dates. While owners can always retain the NFT, their subscription must be maintained for full access to benefits. Brands use the metadata to identify subscription holders and analyze their activity (while adding a new revenue stream).
Customer interactions: Brands use NFC-enabled spaces to connect customers with their Dynamic NFTs and events, physical checkout experiences, and more, intertwining digital and physical customer engagement. When someone redeems a reward by scanning a code or object, your brand can track that activity.
Web3 solutions like Mojito use webhooks to send data from third parties back into your CRM. Every time a user takes an action, Mojito sends that data to your CRM and vital tools. Your data is collected, verified, and authenticated in one place, on or offchain.
Mojito offers a cohesive relationship management infrastructure. You can leverage a complete picture of your customers through thousands of interactions involving physical triggers, third-party apps, web2 tools, and web3 activity. Customer actions across the web or in real life can be configured to work with your CRM.
You’ll be able to understand your customers better than ever and reward them for their engagement at a level that was impossible before.
Benefits of using a web3 CRM
You don’t have to worry about a bumpy or complex ride when you adopt a true web3 CRM.
You’ll have all the tools, resources, and tech stack integrations needed to make an enterprise solution for your customers that meets the standards of your brand.
Below are several benefits you can expect when you connect your web2 CRM to a web3 solution.
1. Bring web2 and web3 data together
Mojito facilitates web2.5, meaning instead of "switching" web experiences, brands and customers can use web2 and web3 with no learning curve or friction at all. All is encompassed in one familiar internet experience.
Users can pay with a credit card or crypto and interact with the online apps they've used all these years (as well as easily using web3 apps).
Mojito enables brands to collect and pull necessary data to understand their customers through all web iterations and experiences—all in one CRM solution.
They can use the full power of this web2 and web3 data for events, NFT collections, token gating (exclusive access based on ownership), and other digital ownership experiences.
2. Actionable data for better customer relationships
Every brand wants to improve its customer relationships. Still, as the internet becomes more fragmented, especially with the introduction of web3, improving service and keeping up with expectations will be much more difficult.
Web2 CRMs are not capable of putting all these actions and platforms together.
However, web3 CRM platforms improve customer relationships by incorporating off and onchain activities through a centralized database.
If brands adopt an enterprise web3 CRM, they can meet changing consumer needs and stand out in the market with better and improved relationships thanks to the tools and possibilities web3 offers.
3. Improved sales and marketing strategies
Now, more than ever, your sales, marketing, and customer service teams will have access to the most accurate and transparent data within multiple channels and communities, all in one place. Your CRM can include customer history, preferences, community management details, and more data points within web3.
You can use accurate and more abundant data to analyze customer behavior for improved decision-making. A suitable CRM can also help sales and marketing teams provide personalized messages based on their data, increasing conversions and other KPIs.
4. Next-level customer service
Not only does better, more current information help improve customer relationships but so does the level of service you can provide.
Your team can proactively resolve issues with real-time data collection (for example, tracking customer engagement and pinpointing areas of opportunity), which increases customer satisfaction.
Brands can go beyond positive experiences and create the best problem-solving processes and community-building opportunities for your customers.
5. Greater ROI potential
Web3 CRMs connect your stack, improving overall sales, marketing, and customer service and building long-term loyalty.
These critical benefits offer bigger ROI potential and future growth. By analyzing blockchain activity, brands can track the popularity of certain products, use blockchain-verified data to track inventory and invest in the areas customers are most interested in.
Web3 CRMs also open new revenue streams, like selling digital assets with NFTs. Brands can even test the reception of new physical products by selling limited sample releases with “NFT digital twins” (when a physical good comes with an NFT representation at purchase).
6. Strategic positioning
You can better position your company for the economic shift to the decentralized web with a web3 CRM.
For example, Mojito's web3 CRM also includes "web2.5" features for the transition.
Some customers won’t know how to navigate web3—they’ll want simplicity. Others will want every tool available to them. Web2.5 serves everyone. New users can pay with a credit card and have a user-friendly experience. At the same time, web3 adopters can take full advantage of innovation and opportunities with cryptocurrency payments and more.
Brands will serve web2 and web3 users for the internet's evolution, and they'll have a robust CRM foundation for the new economy.
