Solana Pay launched today, providing merchants and consumers with a new set of decentralized payment standards and protocols to enable direct acceptance and settlement of digital dollar currency, such as USD Coin (USDC), at the point of sale and online.
Solana Pay ushers in new commerce capabilities and the ability for merchants to accept and move any volume of digital dollar currencies compatible with the Solana blockchain at any hour, anywhere in the world, for disruptively low fees measured in fractions of a cent.
Solana Pay was developed as a decentralized, open peer-to-peer protocol with the initial support of Solana Labs, Circle, Checkout.com, Citcon, and digital wallet integrations from Phantom and FTX and Slope.
Solana Pay is now available for wider adoption and customization by ecosystem participants – including large and small merchants, ecommerce platforms, POS providers, and a broad array of payment service providers – who want to define the next generation of payments. For more information, merchants should go here and developers should go here.
"Solana Pay gives merchants a new, simplified framework to transact with their customers, enabling them to accept and settle funds directly with no intermediaries, zero fraud liability, and processing fees measured in fractions of a cent," said Sheraz Shere, Head of Payments at Solana Labs.
"Solana Pay transforms outdated one-way transaction models into powerful, two-way merchant-to-consumer relationships, giving brands and retailers a direct channel to surprise and delight their customers in new ways." Solana Pay Implementations
Solana Pay is ideal for any merchants looking to accept transactions in dollar digital currencies compatible with Solana. Initial implementations showcase the power and potential of Solana Pay.
Circle Internet Financial, LLC, a global financial technology firm that provides payments and financial infrastructure for internet businesses and the principal operator of USD Coin (USDC), has developed payment and treasury management solutions that support Solana Pay standards, including the ability for merchants to directly accept and manage payments in USDC near-instantly and at near-zero cost. Merchants can settle USDC in their Circle Account and have the option to hold balances in USDC, convert to fiat, and send funds on-chain.
"Circle is thrilled to be working with Solana to simplify and adapt USDC payments for consumer-facing businesses," said Jeremy Allaire, Co-founder, Chairman, and CEO of Circle.
"The launch of Solana Pay is a critical step toward broadening access and usage for merchants and customers who want to participate in the rapidly evolving landscape for the next generation of payment technology." Phantom, a leading wallet on the Solana blockchain, integrated with Solana Pay to enable seamless and fast transactions and to add new payment functionality to Phantom wallets.
"Lowering transaction costs and improving settlement times is a perfect use case for cryptocurrencies that helps both consumers and merchants," said Phantom Chief Product Officer Chris Kalani.
"The line between the real world and digital payments will continue to blur and we all stand to benefit tremendously." Citcon, a leading mobile wallet payment processing and integration company, plans to add Solana Pay to its offering making it easy for merchants to accept U.S. digital dollars across commerce channels, including online and physical stores.
"Our merchants want to be where their customers are – Solana Pay provides a simple integration to existing check-out flows that will provide our merchants and their customers with a great way to transact in digital dollars for everyday purchases," said Citcon CEO Chuck Huang.FTX, a leading cryptocurrency exchange, integrated with Solana Pay to give its wallet users fast, seamless transaction capabilities. Merchants around the globe can instantly receive USDC on Solana from FTX Pay users checking out with this new payment rail.
"FTX looks forward to Solana Pay's powerful use cases, the disintermediation it will bring to the payments space, and the increased utility from which consumers can benefit," said FTX Head of Payments Adam Jacobs.Slope Wallet, a leading mobile wallet of the Solana ecosystem, is integrating Solana Pay standards into its crypto payments settlement offering in order to bring the benefits of a trustless, decentralized world to more people.
"We believe that the biggest adoption driver will be the use of digital crypto payments for routine purchases," said Slope Chief Strategy Officer David Scheer.
"The point of sale user experience we can offer by combining the capabilities of Solana Pay, the scalability of the Solana blockchain and Slope's mobile-native development makes processing payments on Solana Pay through Slope Wallet as easy and quick as taking a selfie." Bandago Van Rental, a nationwide passenger vehicle rental company, set up a Solana Pay point of sale integration within minutes and now offers this payment option to its retail customers in San Francisco.
"Transaction and merchant fees, particularly for visitors traveling from overseas, can be significant," said Bandago CEO Sharky Laguana.
"Working with Solana will help lower our customers' costs, while giving us instant access to the funds. We are excited to explore this new frontier of payment processing, and think this will be both easy and cheaper for our customers, which is always a winning combination!" Solana Pay’s Advantages
Solana Pay is as simple as enabling a barcode on a merchant’s site or at the point-of-sale. Using the Solana Pay SDK, a merchant can enable a peer-to-peer connection to the millions of consumers with crypto wallets who can pay in dollar digital currencies such as USDC and other Solana-compatible crypto currencies.
At launch, merchants can use Solana Pay to accept and near-instantly settle USDC at the point of purchase. With more than $49 billion in circulation as of February 2022, USDC is one of the world’s fastest-growing dollar digital assets and offers a safe and frictionless way for users to transfer value on the blockchain.
With Solana Pay, merchants get real-time access to their money and greater ability to manage working capital, liquidity, more liability protection, and direct access to their money within seconds, with no intermediaries, no holding periods or bank transfer fees. Also, by establishing a direct connection to a blockchain wallet address, merchants unlock a bi-directional communication channel with their customers, allowing them to send offers, grant NFTs, reward loyalty, and much more.
Solana Pay’s decentralized payments structure is built on Solana, which provides scalability (today running at 65,000 transactions per second), close-to-instantaneous settlement (now at 400 milliseconds), and disruptively low fees (currently averaging $0.00025 per transaction).
The new Solana Pay SDK, point-of-sale client, and reference implementations provide options for merchants of all sizes. Enterprises who run their own checkout flows can begin building integrations right now. Solana Pay’s point-of-sale client makes it easy for small restaurants, shops, food carts, and more to accept digital payments for fractions of a penny.
Solana Labs’ Shere sees Solana Pay’s introduction as the first step upon which the entire merchant commerce ecosystem can build and evolve further.
"A revolution in merchant payments is happening now in ways that weren't possible before, enabled by Solana's unique differentiators of speed, scalability, security and cost," he said.
"We are enabling money to move the way data is transferred on the internet - instantly, peer to peer, and with negligible marginal cost."
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