Crypto retail checkouts now have two levers that can act quickly: merchant rails that reduce processing costs and consumer apps that switch to buying and spending crypto.
Walmart’s OnePay sits at the intersection of the two, as a recent Zero Hash partnership allows the app to support Bitcoin and Ethereum trading, hosted wallets, peer-to-peer transfers, and on-chain deposits and withdrawals if the operator enables these features.
According to Zero Hash documentation, custody would be handled by Zero Hash entities and execution would be handled by an affiliated liquidity services unit. Pricing may include a spread in addition to platform fees.
The hinge is the decision to allow external transfers since a walled garden model concentrates balances in omnibus portfolios. In contrast, an open model shifts a portion of everyday purchases to public networks where activity is visible.
OnePay’s distribution channel is important for scale.
Synchrony deploys Walmart cards that live within the OnePay app, which provides a native wallet for later adding funding and crypto transfers if that switch is turned on.
Walmart reports close proximity to U.S. households, lowering the cost of acquiring a payment app tied to retail payments, according to company filings. Calculating conversion is simple: user eligibility multiplied by activation, purchase incidence, and average ticket.
If 10 million assets are eligible, half of them have crypto enabled, 1.0% buy monthly, and the average ticket is $150, the flow involves approximately $1.7-2.5 million per day of Bitcoin purchases, depending on asset share.
Bitcoin spot exchange-traded funds in the United States routinely see daily net flows in the hundreds of millions, so app-based purchases of this size would be small compared to a heavy ETF session, but persistent and coming from retail behavior rather than model-based allocators.
The checkout side of the story is already online elsewhere.
According to Shopify and Coinbase, merchants can accept USDC on basis in Shopify Payments with a delayed capture, redemption and receipt protocol that mirrors card transactions, narrowing the operational gap between crypto and existing systems.
Users can purchase up to $100,000 per week and send crypto to external wallets. In September, the company added peer-to-peer crypto capabilities, a change covered by the broader product push as well as pricing incentives for PYUSD.
Cash App supports Lightning sends and on-chain transfers within consumer limits. These product choices turn cryptocurrency exit ramps into bidirectional rails that can hit the memory pool and, in the case of stablecoins, provide predictable denominations to traders.
The cost and latency forces are stable enough to frame scenarios. Ethereum’s average transaction fee is around 40 cents, while layer 2 fee ranges for simple sends and swaps are between 4 and 20 cents, according to L2fees dashboards.
Bitcoin’s Lightning Network processes payments in seconds for minimal fees under typical conditions, while on-chain confirmations remain probabilistic around ten minutes with fees dependent on congestion.
This division defines the practical menu for traders: Lightning for Bitcoin, layer 2 rails or stablecoin for Ethereum ecosystems and stablecoins for fiat-like denominations.
Steak ‘n Shake functions as a live case study for culture and operations. According to the company’s statements regarding the May 16 Lightning rollout, the channel recorded a Quarter-over-quarter, same-store sales increased about 10.7% in the second quarter and credited Bitcoiners.
Management described an approximately 50 percent reduction in processing costs compared to cards, with one day of launch share of global Bitcoin transactions, as reported by company comments.
On-chain communications around Ethereum acceptance are not formalized, putting the optics of asset choice and the reaction to it ahead of any technical differences at the ledger level.
The technical question for retailers is not whether Bitcoin or Ethereum can process a payment at checkout; it’s about which configuration reduces reimbursement friction, reconciles back-office systems, and maintains unit profitability.
A simple flow model describes how the OnePay launch could interact with ETF-based price formation and on-chain activity. The chart translates the user’s funnel inputs into a daily Bitcoin buying flow, not as a forecast, but to compare to the ETF numbers that traders monitor daily.
| Eligible assets (U) | Crypto enabled | Monthly buyers | Average ticket | Estimated daily purchase of BTC (million USD) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5,000,000 | 30% | 0.5% | $75 | 0.19 |
| 5,000,000 | 30% | 1.0% | $150 | 0.75 |
| 10,000,000 | 50% | 1.0% | $150 | 2.50 |
| 10,000,000 | 50% | 2.0% | $150 | 5:00 a.m. |
| 20,000,000 | 50% | 1.0% | $150 | 5:00 a.m. |
| 20,000,000 | 50% | 2.0% | $150 | 10:00 a.m. |
Whether these purchases are recorded on-chain depends on the scope of the product. Zero Hash Materials Exhibition Partner platforms can enable on-chain deposits and withdrawals. If OnePay launches without this feature, market makers must still acquire cryptocurrencies to fulfill customer orders, but balances remain off-chain and in omnibus custody.
If on-chain transfers are enabled, withdrawals to self-custody and exchanges would add address activity and memory overhead for Bitcoin and be routed to Layer 2 or bridge paths for Ethereum, which connect retail purchases to visible network metrics.
Price disclosure will influence repeat behavior.
According to Zero Hash, affiliated liquidity services can offer prices with a spread from reference rates, and platforms can charge their own fees.
Retailer cohorts respond to round-trip cost, so a lower all-in spread, combined with cashier rewards, tends to increase purchase frequency, while a higher spread decreases repeat tickets.
KYC levels and moving limits will be set based on transaction caps, but in practice the significant constraints on network liquidity are the presence of external transfers, supported networks such as Lightning and specific Layer 2s, as well as any waiting periods related to card or ACH funding.
Merchant readiness is now less about gross throughput and more about operations. According to Shopify, the framework covers refund flows, partial captures, and receipt status, which are controls that card systems have implemented over decades.
For Bitcoin, Lightning solves the payment event confirmation delay, and merchants can access cold storage or settlement accounts later. For Ethereum, Layer 2 and stablecoins reduce fees and latency profile to an acceptable range for the consumer, and stablecoins avoid price conversion steps for fiat-denominated businesses.
Retail optics will continue to influence what asset sits on the counter.
Bitcoin brings community energy that translates into earned media and rapid adoption, as evidenced by the Steak ‘n Shake neighborhood. Ethereum brings a building base and options through layer 2 networks that can be cheaper or faster than its base layer.
Stablecoins present a third path that frames the decision as internet dollars rather than a tribal choice of assets. The practical result for most large retailers is a mix of Lightning where Bitcoin spenders are active, stablecoins for e-commerce and kiosks, and selective support for Ethereum routed on Layer 2 to meet fee and latency targets.
The question in the title is about product toggles and back-office design rather than technology availability. Today, payment can use Lightning, USDC on Base in Shopify Payments, or comparable rails..
OnePay has a way to offer transactions, custody, and transfers via Zero Hash if it enables these settings, with approval from its trust company. ETFs remain the gold standard for comparing retail app flow to judge price impact.
The setting that decides whether retail demand reaches public networks is external transfers at launch.
