On Friday, June 10, 2022, Farfetch Ltd. announced that it would soon begin accepting crypto payments. The digital luxury-fashion platform plans to accept seven crypto coins including Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and BNB on the Farfetch Marketplace.
How the Rollout Will Work
The British-Portuguese luxury platform will initially roll out the program to its private clients in the next few months. After that, the platform will extend the service to all its clients in the UK, US, and Europe. According to the company, it will continue to expand this service until it covers all its customers.
To roll out the crypto payment service, Farfetch has collaborated with Lunu, a German crypto platform. Through the collaboration, Lunu will handle the point of sale terminals that will accommodate in-store transactions. At these terminals, customers can access their crypto wallets and make payments by scanning a QR code.
Successful Trial Runs
The decision to offer crypto payments follows the success of small trial runs at its Off-White flagship stores in London, Paris, and Milan, including Farfetch’s luxury retailer, Browns. During those trials, the digital luxury fashion platform relied on the point of sale terminals supplied by Lunu to process crypto payments successfully.
LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE, the French luxury giant, owns a 60% stake in Off-White, which is operated by the Milan-based New Guard group, a subsidiary of Farfetch.
What the Leadership Team Had to Say
Commenting on the revelation, Farfetch founder and CEO, J osé Neves, stated that the rollout was a crucial step to test and learn. He added that they were excited to share their technical and service expertise with their community. Neves added that as a platform company, they were continually innovating to serve as a bridge for the luxury industry and new tech, and the environment where the luxury customer of today was, and where they will be tomorrow.
The CEO concluded by stating, “With this move, we look forward to empowering our incredible boutique and brand partners to embrace cryptocurrency.”
Farfetch & Crypto
Farfetch is not new to the crypto sector. In 2019, Farfetch was one of the founding members of the failed Libra Association, a global initiative that aimed to launch the Facebook Libra coin. At the time, the CEO, Neves, was quite excited about the blockchain. He stated that the blockchain would benefit the luxury industry by improving IP protection, and improving transparency in the product life cycle. When the Facebook Libra Coin failed, Farfetch never gave up on crypto, as demonstrated by their latest move.
However, they are not the only luxury brand associating themselves with the crypto sector. Other players in the luxury industry such as Louis Vuitton have immersed themselves fully in the crypto world by launching various NFT collections.
Summary
Associating with the crypto industry is quite beneficial for luxury brands, which aim to be at the lead when it comes to what is cool and trendy. With their target audience being young people, who associate with crypto, including crypto payments are part of their customer experience makes a lot of sense for Farfetch.
