Italian luxury brand Gucci bolstered its Web3 initiatives as the first major high-end brand to accept customer payments in the form of ApeCoins.
It looks like there is no stopping high-end Italian fashion house Gucci from bolstering its Web3 initiatives. According to a tweet from the luxury brand’s official Twitter account on Tuesday, it will start accepting ApeCoin (APE) payments from customers in select stores in the USA.
The Bored Ape Yacht Club-affiliated ApeCoin joins a list of 12 other digital assets Gucci accepts from customers. The list includes Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Litecoin (LTC), Dogecoin (DOGE), Ether (ETH), Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), Shiba Inu (SHIB), and five US dollar stablecoins that 111 Gucci stores in North America started accepting in May.
Gucci will accept ApeCoin payments through its partnership with BitPay, a payment service provider that has been around since 2011. The high-end brand will become the first merchant to accept ApeCoin payments from its customers.
Gucci Deepens its Web3 Roots
With a big name such as Gucci in the mix, ApeCoin will receive significant mainstream exposure, not to mention its additional utility to the cryptocurrency. Moreover, with BitPay providing the payment infrastructure, Gucci customers who purchase items in-store with APE are assured of utmost security and seamless transactions. After all, BitPay has helped established brands like AMC Theaters in accepting crypto payments in the past.
It’s incredible how, despite the ongoing bear market, the luxury brand is further deepening its Web3 roots. In February, Gucci kicked off its foray into the NFT space with the SuperPlastic: SuperGucci NFT collection, which was in collaboration with vinyl toy maker SuperPlastic.
The following month, the brand rolled out the Gucci Grail NFT collection that targets top owners of blue-chip NFT projects like the Bored Ape Yacht Club. The month of May saw the high-end fashion brand accepting 12 digital assets as payments in 111 stores in North America.
And just last month, the brand invested $25,000 and collaborated with SuperRare for an NFT exhibit. The Italian luxury house also joined the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) behind NFT marketplace SuperRare, acquiring 150,000 $RARE tokens in the process, which was around $31,000 at the time. Gucci did it to earn governance rights within the SuperRare community.
Gucci also launched games on Roblox, including Gucci Garden, which has drawn in 19 million visitors. The brand was also responsible for creating “skins” for avatars in the Animal Crossing and Pokemon Go games.
The ApeCoin Community
Following much anticipation, ApeCoin was finally launched in March this year. The DAO and governance community associated with APE has since remained deeply engaged and has supervised critical decisions like the vetoing of a proposal last June that intended to port APE from Ethereum to a new blockchain.
In July, the DAO favorably voted for various proposals, including feasibility studies on the possibility of hosting an NFT conference and festival and funding the Bored Ape Gazette with APE so it could become a 24-hour news site. Currently, the project is working on rolling out APE staking after a strong clamor from the community.
The ApeCoin has shown a strong resurgence recently, perhaps due to positive developments in the Otherside Metaverse project.
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