Only 0.2% of the euro area companies selling goods and services online in a new European Central Bank survey said they accept crypto assets, underscoring the distance between digital-asset payment products and routine merchant acceptance.
The figure comes from the ECB’s 2026 survey on companies’ use of cash. The survey covered 8,205 businesses across all 21 euro area countries in retail, restaurants and cafés, hotels, and arts, entertainment and recreation. Ipsos conducted the interviews between February 23 and April 10.
The result should be read narrowly. It measures whether sampled consumer-facing companies that sell online accept a combined category of crypto assets and stablecoins, with Bitcoin, Ether and Tether given as examples. It does not measure transaction value, payment frequency, consumer ownership or acceptance across every industry.
Cards and bank transfers dominate online acceptance
Among surveyed companies selling online, 82% accepted payment cards and 74% accepted credit transfers. Crypto acceptance at 0.2% was therefore not simply behind cash or cards; it remained marginal even within a sales channel built around remote digital payment.
That contrast matters for payment providers. A merchant can add a familiar wallet or bank-transfer option through established acquiring and account-to-account infrastructure, while crypto acceptance may require decisions about custody, conversion, settlement, refunds, accounting and compliance. The survey did not ask merchants which of those considerations deterred crypto acceptance, so it cannot establish the cause of the gap.
It also grouped volatile crypto assets and stablecoins into one answer option. As a result, the data do not show whether euro area merchants view stablecoins differently from Bitcoin or Ether, nor whether acceptance is direct or provided through an intermediary that converts the payment into euros.
Mobile payments gained ground at physical locations
The broader survey shows that merchants are adopting other digital payment methods. Among companies receiving customer payments at physical locations, mobile payment acceptance rose from 36% in 2024 to 68% in 2026. Physical card acceptance reached 88%, while cash remained the most widely accepted method at 92%.
The comparison is not a like-for-like crypto growth series. The ECB changed the 2026 questionnaire to ask separately about payment methods accepted at physical points of sale and for online or remote purchases. The report says this should have only a minor effect on comparability with 2024, but it limits broader conclusions across survey waves.
Consumer preference was the most frequently selected consideration when companies chose which payment method to accept, cited by 26% of respondents. Security followed at 22%, and ease of handling at 15%. Those responses cover payment-method selection generally rather than crypto specifically, but they frame the operational test any new merchant payment rail must pass.
What the 0.2% figure means for payment providers
The survey suggests that the immediate competitive benchmark for crypto payment products is not merely whether blockchain settlement works. Providers must also make the customer and merchant experience comparable with payment methods that already have broad acceptance.
For stablecoin infrastructure companies, the combined survey category creates an important evidence gap. Stablecoins are often positioned as a settlement or treasury rail even when the consumer never pays with a token at checkout. Such behind-the-scenes use would not necessarily appear as merchant crypto acceptance in this survey.
The 0.2% result is therefore a strong measure of visible online checkout acceptance among the sampled sectors, but not a complete measure of blockchain use in payment processing. It shows that crypto is barely present as a customer-facing option while leaving open whether tokenised money may gain adoption first in cross-border settlement, treasury operations or provider-to-provider infrastructure.