We’re excited to announce that WalletConnect Pay is now live at a physical location, with our very first merchant partner: 94° Coffee in Lisbon. This marks an important milestone for merchants and WalletConnect Pay alike.
Why 94° Coffee?
Located in Lisbon, 94° Coffee is known for its carefully crafted coffee, thoughtful design, and strong sense of community. It’s the kind of place where people come not just for a drink, but for the experience of tasting finely brewed beans.
That made it the perfect location to pilot WalletConnect Pay in the physical world.
Behind 94° Coffee is Illia, an entrepreneur who moved from Ukraine to Lisbon and built the café around his passions for design, coffee, and entrepreneurship. His approach blends aesthetics with intention, from the space itself to the way customers interact with the brand.
For Illia, accepting crypto payments wasn’t just about experimenting with something new. It was about aligning with the values of speed, openness, and innovation.
“Crypto payments allow for faster settlement and fewer intermediaries,” Illia shared. “It just makes sense, especially for a business like ours that values efficiency and modern tools.”
The demand to pay with crypto is already high
Since introducing WalletConnect Pay at 94°, Illia has noticed something interesting: more customers are actively asking to pay with crypto.
What was once an impossible request is quickly becoming a regular part of conversation. This works well in a city like Lisbon, where crypto adoption and international communities intersect.
Why do merchants like 94° want crypto payments?
Accepting crypto payments can reduce barriers to growth significantly. Crypto and stablecoin payments can solve many of the problems that come with the existing card network and traditional rails, including:
- High processing and foreign exchange fees
- Slow settlement times
- Declined or blocked transactions
- Limited access to certain regions or customers
For merchants, these problems mean lost revenue, frustrated customers, and unpredictable cash flow.
By accepting crypto payments, merchants can:
- Meaningfully lower acceptance costs than card networks. Crypto-originated payments can be up to 5× cheaper than traditional card payments, particularly for cross-border and high-volume transactions. By accepting crypto payments with WalletConnect, merchants like 94° improve margins without operational complexity.
- Fast, predictable settlement. Payments confirm quickly, enabling instant or near-instant settlement compared to card clearing cycles. Merchants gain faster access to funds, improving cash flow and reducing reliance on working capital facilities.
- Predictable and transparent fee structures. Clear pricing and settlement behavior make costs easier to understand, forecast, and manage over time, especially compared to opaque card fee models.
This is just the beginning
94° Coffee is our first live location, but it won’t be the last.
WalletConnect Pay is designed to scale across cafes, retail spaces, and physical venues around the world. This launch represents the first step toward a future where paying with crypto is as natural as tapping a card or scanning a QR code.
We’re excited to continue bringing crypto payments into the real world - one location at a time, any wallet, any asset, anywhere.