How should IT and business leaders in retail and eCommerce approach cryptocurrency?

For the IT leaders, prepare a roadmap for how you could integrate Crypto into the payment options you use at checkout. This should show what (if any) systems changes that need to be made, how long this will take, and the skills gap required to deliver it.

For the finance leader, make sure you can account for it on your balance sheet and how you will liquify it downstream.

For the business leaders, prepare the business case.

As a payment method, crypto should be no different to credit cards, digital wallets, or Paypal. You either accept it, or you don't.

For retail and e-commerce they need to adopt cryptocurrencies and save the 3% they pay Visa/MC. For retailers who work on razor thin margins, this should be one of the easiest things to do. And if you don't want to deal with the cryptocurrency part, allow your payment processor to seamlessly convert it into fiat currency. Business leaders need to understand what it can do to their business. Their IT part will fall in place automatically when there is demand from business as their are platforms that can be adopted..

I would definitely encourage IT leaders to learn about cryptocurrency technologies because the underlying concepts of distributed consensus, driven by incentives that the blockchain and particularly Bitcoin has brought to the forefront, are amazing.

Even established computer scientists who have worked for many years in distributed computing are totally amazed by the way in which distributed consensus and simple cryptography can enable a commerce system that is as powerful as Bitcoin.

That’s the technical part. In the real world you need to handle all the regulatory and compliance requirements and the need for no unlawful transactions. So the technological capabilities and the concepts that have been brought to the fore by Bitcoin is absolutely something that everybody should take note of. But the way that they’re played out, interestingly, may not even be in ecommerce, like the concepts of executable scripts in some of these cryptocurrencies can help in the creation of smart contracts, which has nothing to do with the currency at all. So the applications are numerous and is definitely something that I would encourage all IT executives and practitioners to study.

Recently, I’ve seen a significant rise in the number of businesses leveraging outsourced talent to build platforms that support cryptocurrencies. As more businesses continue to give cryptocurrency strategic consideration, I expect to see an acceleration in the need for business leaders to seek outsourcing partners (whether in the US or abroad) with these kinds of groundbreaking skills.

Something is going to happen with cryptocurrency, so it's best to try to "get ahead" of the curve here. Don't need to run full steam ahead and try to pick "the right one", but certainly start now to learn about how cryptos will/can be used in your offerings. I'd do a pilot (much like Starbucks announced they're going to accept Bitcoin) and start learning what you'll need internally. A pilot would actually be a great way to engage with your customer base --- find out what they know as well as what they want. Get started! Every "new" technology has it's nay-sayers --- remember how some thought the internet was going to just a fad or that social media was a passing fancy? IMO the same applies here. There will be many changes and shakeouts, but getting started is a huge requirement.