[DigitalToday reporter Jinju Hong] Ripple argued that the cryptocurrency payments market could follow a growth path similar to e-commerce.

On June 24 local time, blockchain outlet U.Today reported that Reece Merrick (리스 메릭), a senior executive who leads Ripple's Middle East and Africa (MEA) region, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that crypto payments are nearing an inflection point that could shake the global financial system.

Merrick compared today's crypto payments market to e-commerce in the early 2000s. At the time, online shopping was widely seen as unfamiliar and risky, and its share of retail sales stood at just 0.2 percent. He noted that consumers were reluctant to type credit card numbers into web browsers, and said e-commerce was initially treated as a "strange new technology."

But e-commerce grew rapidly as secure payment gateways and ultra-fast internet spread. The arrival of smartphones further lowered barriers, and online consumption moved beyond a supplementary tool for offline distribution to become a main channel. "Today, more than $1 out of every $5 in global retail spending happens online," Merrick said. He also pointed to e-commerce's share growing to 20 percent of total retail sales as of 2026.

Ripple said crypto payments could follow the same pattern. Merrick said the crypto industry has not yet reached mass adoption, but is in the process of building the core infrastructure that can enable it. He said the industry is now putting in place the foundational technologies that served as a turning point for e-commerce growth.

Merrick highlighted highly scalable layer1 blockchains, sufficiently liquid stablecoins and regulated fiat on-ramps. He described it as "watching the ultra-fast internet and smartphones of the crypto era being deployed." He argued that once payments infrastructure is sufficiently in place, crypto can expand beyond being a simple investment asset to become a payment method for real-world use.

The remarks are significant in that they explain the growth potential of crypto payments from an infrastructure perspective. Merrick put more weight on the environment that improves usability than on the technology itself. He said that just as e-commerce grew rapidly as security, access conditions and device penetration came together, crypto payments can spread in earnest only when blockchain scalability, stablecoin liquidity and regulated onboarding systems are combined.

Merrick also said he did not see crypto payments as already settling into the mainstream market. He also mentioned the current limitation of failing to achieve mass adoption. Still, he stressed that the market is not in a stagnant phase, but in a stage of preparing for the next growth phase. Against that backdrop, Ripple's message is read as showing that competition in crypto payments is shifting from token prices to building infrastructure for real-world use.