The popular Shopify e-commerce platform now supports the decentralized payment software Solana Pay, created by Solana Labs. This implies that all of the millions of Shopify-powered companies can now accept Solana Pay. It will first support USDC, the second biggest stablecoin by market cap (at $25.9 bln, according CoinGecko).
It wasn’t a fluke that we went with USDC initially. Generally speaking, shops are more likely to accept a currency that is pegged to the dollar. In addition, USDC is more regulated than, say, many cryptocurrencies, and users are used to making purchases with digital dollars. Solana Foundation’s head of business development and partnerships, Josh Fried, claimed that the protocol is open to the idea of integrating cryptocurrencies like SOL and BONK in the future.
As credit card processing costs typically reach 3.5% every transaction, Fried claimed that Solana Pay was “fee-free.” At the time of publication, one transaction reportedly cost around 0.000005 SOL, or about 0.00000005 USD.
The partnership also paves the way for stores to use novel loyalty schemes, such as NFT loyalty tokens. Customers that use Solana Pay often may be eligible for discounts or other incentives.
Shopify is responsible for $444 billion in global economic activity and accounts for 10% of all e-commerce in the United States. Strike, a payment processor for Bitcoin’s lightning network, was incorporated into the platform last year, joining the ranks of crypto veterans Coinbase Commerce and Bitpay.
Fried also revealed that Helius, Mad Lads, and MonkeDAO, all companies with a focus on cryptocurrency, have all decided to integrate Solana Pay on their Shopify stores. The plugin may be used with any Solana Pay-compatible crypto wallet, including Phantom, Solflare, and Glow.
Solana has had challenges with dependability and availability in the past. Co-creator Anatoly Yakovenko called the problems a “curse” because of the free flow of information on the network. However, recent data shows that the network’s performance is improving. Solana’s latest performance report shows that the service has been available without interruption for a whole calendar quarter since February 25.
