Most merchants picture the same person when they hear "crypto payment."

A 24-year-old in a hoodie. Someone who lives on Reddit. A day trader who got lucky and now wants to buy a sandwich with his gains. Probably annoying to deal with. Probably not coming back.

That picture is wrong. And the data that contradicts it is the single most useful thing you can put in front of a merchant when you're having a conversation about placing a terminal.

Because the real profile of a crypto-paying customer isn't a fringe demographic. It's the customer every retailer spends marketing dollars trying to find.

Who Actually Owns Crypto

Let's start with age, because age is the variable merchants care about most when they think about customer lifetime value.

One in three crypto owners in the United States falls in the 30–44 age bracket. That's not an accident. That cohort has been building wealth for a decade, has disposable income, and is in its peak spending years. They're buying homes, furnishing them, taking vacations, spending on their kids, and making the high-ticket discretionary purchases that are the difference between a good month and a bad one for most independent retailers.

The 30–44 bracket isn't the youngest crypto demo. And it's not the wealthiest. But it's the one that moves the most money through local businesses, consistently, year after year.

And the income data stacks on top of it. Capital One Shopping's 2025 analysis found that high earners are two to five times more likely to own crypto than the average American. At household incomes above $500,000, crypto ownership runs at 5.55%. That's the customer base of a Porsche dealer, a fine jeweler, or a specialty boutique — not a fringy online forum.

The "tech bro" narrative has about as much to do with who actually spends crypto as the "gambler" narrative does with everyone who owns a brokerage account.

What They Actually Spend

Demographics tell you who the customer is. Transaction data tells you what they're worth.

BitPay's average transaction size hit $390 in 2025. For context: the average credit card transaction in the United

States runs roughly $80 to $100. The person paying with crypto is spending almost four times as much per transaction as the average card swipe.

One in five BitPay transactions goes toward luxury goods.

Not everyday purchases. Not grocery runs. Jewelry, watches, premium electronics, high-end experiences. The purchases that look different on a merchant's monthly revenue report.

Capital One Shopping's analysis put a number on the broader pattern: crypto-paying customers spend roughly twice as much as credit card users in the same merchant categories. Not twice as much in a single transaction — twice as much overall. They spend more per visit and they're more likely to be making discretionary purchases rather than routine ones.

There's a logical explanation for this. Someone who has taken the time to acquire crypto, store it, and choose to spend it at a specific business is not a passive consumer. They're an engaged buyer. They made three deliberate decisions before they even walked through the door. That's a different behavioral profile than someone who taps their credit card out of habit.

High average transaction value, high-income demographic, discretionary spending orientation. That's a customer acquisition consultant's target profile. It's also the person in line at your merchants' registers who currently can't pay the way they prefer.

The Net-New Customer Data

Here's the finding that tends to stop merchants mid-sentence.

A Forrester Consulting study commissioned by BitPay found that up to 40% of crypto-paying customers were net-

new to the merchant. Not returning customers who switched payment methods. Brand new customers who specifically sought out that business because it accepted crypto.

Think about what that means operationally.

Merchants spend between 5 and 25 times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one. An independent retailer putting $2,000 a month into digital advertising, direct mail, and local promotions is buying new customers at real cost. They have a cost-per-acquisition number, whether they've calculated it or not.

Crypto acceptance generated 40% net-new customer rates in the documented cases — without an ad budget, without a referral program, without a discount. Just by being findable to a consumer segment that's actively looking for places where they can spend their holdings.

That's because the crypto ecosystem has its own discovery infrastructure. Wallet apps surface nearby accepting merchants. Online directories list them. Community groups share them. A merchant who says yes to crypto becomes visible to a customer base that most marketing spend can't reach — because that customer base isn't responding to Google ads, they're looking for places that speak their language.

88.2% of business owners in a global survey by NFTEvening and Storible reported increased revenue after accepting crypto payments.

That's not a coincidence. It's the net-new customer effect compounding.

The Inquiry Data Every Merchant Is Sitting On

Here's the part that makes the demographic argument concrete in the field.

A January 2026 survey by the National Crypto Association and PayPal, covering 619 payment decision-makers, found 88% of merchants already receive customer inquiries about paying with crypto. 69% say those requests arrive at least monthly.

That's the merchant across the street from you.

They're not being asked by teenagers. They're being asked by the 38-year-old who just dropped $600 on a piece of jewelry and asked, on the way out, whether he could pay in crypto next time. They're being asked by the professional who came in for a $1,200 auto repair and mentioned he had Bitcoin he'd rather spend than his card. They're being asked by the kind of customer that the merchant wishes came in twice as often.

And they're telling that customer no. Not because the economics don't work. Because they don't have the infrastructure to say yes.

That's the conversation.

When a merchant already knows their best customers are asking for this — and you can show them who those customers actually are, what they actually spend, and how many of them are net-new acquisitions — the objection changes. It shifts from "why would I do this" to "why haven't I done this yet."

The Merchant Who Can't Say Yes Is Losing Twice

The first loss is obvious. A customer who wants to spend $400 in crypto and gets told the business doesn't accept it goes somewhere else. That transaction is gone.

The second loss is less visible but more expensive. That customer doesn't come back. Not because they're hostile — because the business communicated something about itself. That it hasn't kept up. That it's not the kind of place that accommodates how people like him want to operate. He'll find the independent jeweler three blocks away who said yes last month.

The merchant who can say yes captures both the transaction and the relationship. And if that customer follows the 40% net-new pattern, no one spent a dollar of marketing budget to acquire him. He arrived because the infrastructure was there.

That's not a crypto story. That's a customer retention story.

Every merchant I've worked with who was skeptical going in has come back with the same observation a few months after placement: the customers paying with crypto are exactly who they want more of. Higher ticket. Less friction. No chargebacks. And often, someone they've never seen before.

The data was there before the anecdote. It always is.

The customer profile makes the merchant conversation easier. The infrastructure is what turns that conversation into income.

Gedam Tekle is a former U.S. Marine and Oakland Police Sergeant who left law enforcement to build crypto payment infrastructure businesses. He has personally exited two eight-figure companies and helped over 4,000 entrepreneurs build residual income. He is the founder of Dividend Shift.