Solana labs announced its newest product called Solana pay that is seeking to provide low-cost, instant settlement for online and in-store payments. Firms that are supporting the new payment protocol include Checkout.com, Circle, and Citcon with integrations with crypto exchange FTX and ecosystem wallets Phantom and Slope.
In accordance with the blog post, the primary reason behind Solana Pay is that the payment and underlying technology go from being a necessary service utility to a true peer-to-peer communication channel between the merchant and consumer.
In the blog published, Sheraz Shere, head of payments for Solana Labs stated that Crypto payments have been central to the industry since the Bitcoin white paper advocated “peer-to-peer electronic cash” over a decade ago. But a mix of price volatility, slow on-chain settlement, and tax headaches hampered growth.
“Now that we have a blockchain that has the throughput, speed and scalability and low fees of traditional payment networks – 50,000 transactions per second and sub-second transfer times, we can potentially build a merchant payment system that’s truly on the blockchain, and most importantly, that’s peer-to-peer and decentralized and permissionless.”
While the payment platform can utilize the native SOL token or any other asset built on its blockchain, it’s however keenly focusing on Circle’s USDC, the world’s second largest USDC is primarily built on Ethereum as it currently has a market capitalization of $4 billion out of USDC’s total $50 billion.
Speaking on the development Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire in a separate blog post said, ‘The launch of Solana Pay is a critical step toward broadening access and usage for merchants and customers who want a faster, more efficient payment option for everyday commerce.’
But the buck does not stop here.
Solana Pay other use cases
The blog post further mentions Solana Pay’s ability to open a direct communication channel with a customer, providing merchants with consumer loyalty and engagement tools. The developer said it would soon allow merchants to send users nonfungible tokens [NFTs] in addition to more traditional but blockchain-enhanced loyalty programs.
That being said, Solana despite being touted for its high throughput and low fees has witnessed a series of network outages recently following which its developers have released a new mainnet version with more upgrades in the coming months.