Fashion giant Gucci to start accepting crypto payments

Italian high-end luxury fashion house Gucci is looking to add crypto as a payment option in some of its U.S. stores from late May, with plans to expand the pilot to all its North American stores by summer 2022.

According to a May 4 report, Gucci will accept in-store crypto payments by emailing customers a link comprising a QR code. After scanning the QR code, customers will be able to complete the transaction through their crypto wallets.

The first Gucci stores to accept crypto payments are Wooster Street in New York, Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles, Miami Design District, Phipps Plaza in Atlanta, and The Shops at Crystals in Las Vegas.

The company will accept more than ten cryptocurrencies for payments. These include Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ethereum (ETH), Wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC), Litecoin (LTC), Shiba Inu (SHIB), Dogecoin (DOGE), and five stablecoins pegged to the U.S. dollar.

The company did not specify which stablecoins it plans to accept.

Commenting on the upcoming development, Gucci President and CEO Marco Bizzarri said:

Gucci is always looking to embrace new technologies when they can provide an enhanced experience for our customers.

He added:

Now that we are able to integrate cryptocurrencies within our payment system, it is a natural evolution for those customers who would like to have this option available to them.

Leading fashion brands continue embracing web3

This news comes after Gucci teamed up with SUPERPLASTIC to launch a non-fungible token (NFT) collection dubbed SUPERGUCCI. The collection comprises 500 NFTs that synthetic artists Janky and Guggimon co-created. Data from OpenSea shows the collection’s floor price is 3.98 Ether (ETH).

Apart from Gucci, other renowned brands have also onboarded the web3 bandwagon to integrate crypto payments, drop NFTs, or venture into the metaverse. An example is fashion designer Philipp Plein, who started accepting crypto payments through a partnership with Coinify. 

Meanwhile, Zara, a Spanish apparel company, recently dropped its first solo collection dubbed Lime Glam in the metaverse, which can be worn both in the real world and the Zepeto metaverse.

Nike also recently partnered with RTFKT Studios to launch its first NFT collection on the Ethereum blockchain. Dubbed RTFKT x Nike Dunk Genesis CRYPTOKICKS, the NFT collection is designed for use in the metaverse.