TL;DR

• Solana Pay, a decentralised payment protocol developed by Solana Labs, has integrated its plug-in with Shopify, enabling millions of businesses on the platform to use it for payments.

• USDC is subject to stricter regulations than, say, several altcoins, and most users are accustomed to transacting with digital dollars.

Introduction

According to information exclusively provided to TechCrunch, Solana Pay, a decentralised payment protocol developed by Solana Labs, has integrated its plug-in with Shopify, enabling millions of businesses on the platform to use it for payments.

The layer-1 blockchain Solana serves as the foundation for Solana Pay, which debuted in February 2022. Josh Fried, business development and partnerships at Solana Foundation, told TechCrunch that the first payment option for this integration will be USDC, the second-largest stablecoin with a market capitalisation of $25.9 billion.

Why USDC Only?

Selecting USDC initially was not a mistake. It's likely that most retailers will embrace anything that is so strongly correlated with the dollar. Additionally, USDC is subject to stricter regulations than, say, several altcoins, and most users are accustomed to transacting with digital dollars. However, the protocol will take into account adding cryptocurrencies like SOL and BONK in the future, Fried said.

Fried stated, "Some argue that the killer app for cryptocurrency hasn't arrived, but it has: payments." "[Everyone] ought to be putting more effort into this."

Businesses typically pay 1.5% to 3.5% in credit card processing costs for each purchase; however, Fried claimed that employing the Solana Pay option is almost "free of charge." On Solana's blockchain, a transaction typically costs $0.00025, or 1/100 of a penny. Naturally, Solana has already had to cope with downtime problems, which have expenses of their own. However, as of Q2, the blockchain declared 100% uptime, indicating improvement. It's also important to remember that Shopify introduced its own business credit card for retailers in July, marking another entry into the credit card market.

About Integrations

According to Fried, shops can establish loyalty programs with "little development" with the aid of the integration. These incentive programs may be as easy as introducing NFT loyalty tokens, which would be applied when a customer checked out. If the customer returned again and used Solana Pay, the retailer could then give them a discount.

Fried revealed that a few groups and companies who are specialised on cryptocurrencies, like as Helius, Mad Lads, and MonkeDAO, have also decided to incorporate Solana Pay into their Shopify stores. The plug-in can be connected to any Solana-centric cryptocurrency wallet, such as Phantom, Solflare, and Glow, that has merged with Solana Pay.

Shopify is also no stranger to accepting cryptocurrency payments. It introduced several blockchain-enabled commerce tools and functionalities in February to assist merchants build tokengating applications. Shopify already integrates with other payment applications like Coinbase Commerce, Strike, Crypto.com and BitPay.

Solana Labs views their blockchain as "perfectly suited for payments" in general, according to Fried. According to him, there are no chargebacks, holding periods, bank fees, or middlemen. "To process merchant payments, you must have speed at the point of sale. Waiting for wallet transactions on a website is not something anyone wants to do. Can you picture waiting three minutes at a retail point of sale for your payment to process similarly? Nobody desires to carry out that.