Flexa launches Spedn app to let users pay for goods in physical stores with cryptocurrencies including bitcoin, ether, bitcoin cash, and the gemini dollar
Unleash your electronic cash — iPhone Screenshots NewsBTC : eToro Market Update: Adoption Explosion Dalmas Ngetich / Ethereum World News : The Wait Is Over, Bitcoin (BTC) Is Now Mainstream JP Buntinx / NullTX : 4 More Reasons why the Bitcoin Price is Going up in 2019 Marko Vidrih / ALTCOIN MAGAZINE : Altcoin News: Large American Retailers Are Starting to Accept Cryptocurrency Daria Rud / Coinspeaker : Winklevoss Twins Make Amazon Subsidiary and Other Major Retailers Accept Bitcoin Trustnodes : Starbucks, Amazon-Owned Whole Foods, 30,000 Retailers Now Accept Bitcoin, Ethereum and Bitcoin Cash Nick Chong / Blockonomi : Mainstream Adoption: Spedn Bitcoin in Stores, Bakkt in Final Testing & eBay “Happening” Darryn Pollock / Ethereum World News : Starbucks Finally Accepts Crypto Along With Wholefoods, Nordstrom, and Others Duncan Riley / SiliconANGLE : New mobile app enables cryptocurrency payments at retail outlets Tweets: Jeff Roberts / @jeffjohnroberts : Crypto breakthrough: Whole Foods, Starbucks et al now take Bitcoin via in-store scanners with @Gemini doing the back-end. The retailers are being low key but I tried it out this weekend, and it works. Details + context from @tylerwinklevoss here: http://fortune.com/... Bob McElrath / @bobmcelrath : First, download Gemini app. Second send all your coins to Gemini. This is not paying with bitcoin. It's getting the merchant and customer to use the same custodial “bank” and doing an internal ledger transfer. Lightning is coming for you. https://www.forbes.com/... SamPatt / @samuelpatt : “Coup” might be all too fitting a term. It's a company running a custodial wallet that sends fiat payments to merchants, and abides by New York state financial regs. If this is what “crypto adoption” looks like then what exactly is the point? https://twitter.com/... Tyrone V. Ross Jr / @tr401 : “To give an idea of what's at stake, $5.93 trillion in traditional credit card payments resulted in $88.39 billion in fees in the U.S. alone, according to a 2017 Nilson report.” It will be hard to break America's swipe addiction, but it's positive to see crypto payments evolve. https://twitter.com/... Joseph Young / @iamjosephyoung : Merchant adoption is one of the most important areas of crypto that is currently lacking. This is quite incredible. One big step further towards mainstream adoption. https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Flexa's Spedn launch is the first serious attempt in this coverage arc to close the gap between holding crypto and spending it at a register: the app routes bitcoin, ether, bitcoin cash, and the Gemini dollar to physical store checkouts, with the description naming large US retailers — including Amazon-owned Whole Foods — among the acceptors. Pairing the volatile coins with the Winklevoss-backed Gemini dollar gives merchants a stable settlement option.
The move lands mid-stream in a longer wallet story: PayPal and Venmo had already been pushing their apps toward NFC in-store payments (in-store NFC plans), and Amex had earlier chosen to build its own checkout with Stripe rather than adopt outside wallets (Amex pairing with Stripe on its own checkout). Spedn tests whether crypto balances can ride that same retail rails.
First-order effects
- Shoppers can now spend four cryptocurrencies at participating physical retailers by scanning from the Spedn app, and the named merchants — Whole Foods among them — become the first major US storefronts accepting them at the point of sale.
- Gemini gains distribution for its dollar-pegged token as a checkout currency, using retail acceptance rather than trading volume to drive adoption.
Second-order effects
- Consumer fintechs are pushed to match: Venmo follows with the ability to buy, hold, and sell four cryptocurrencies (Venmo adding crypto trading), and Affirm plans a debit card that lets customers transact crypto directly from savings accounts (Affirm's crypto-linked debit card plan) — turning crypto spendability into table stakes for wallet apps.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, standalone crypto-payment apps like Spedn get absorbed into mainstream wallets — the endpoint visible when PayPal unveils merchant-facing acceptance of bitcoin, ether, and USDT through external wallets (PayPal's Pay With Crypto rollout) — shifting competition from whether crypto is accepted to who owns the checkout layer.
- Retail acceptance becomes the legitimacy test for crypto assets: each new merchant cohort converts crypto from a speculative holding into a payment instrument, pressuring card networks and legacy checkout providers on fees and settlement speed.
The trend: Cryptocurrency is migrating from exchange-held asset to spendable checkout instrument, with mainstream wallets progressively absorbing what pioneer apps like Spedn proved out at the register.