Solana Pay, a decentralized payments protocol based on the Solana blockchain that allows businesses and e-commerce platforms to accept payments via crypto wallets, has gone live.
The peer-to-peer payments infrastructure is meant to give online businesses and point-of-sale providers around the world the ability to accept and settle payments in a variety of digital assets.
Solana Labs, in collaboration with Checkout.com, Citcon, and payments firm Circle, developed the infrastructure to support the adoption of USDC, among other assets, across traditional markets.
According to Solana Labs, merchants would get “real-time” payments and will save money due to Solana’s lower fees.
“Merchants and consumers want a frictionless experience without taking on unnecessary volatility risk, and consumers don’t necessarily want to transact with their investments,” Sheraz Shere, head of payments at Solana Labs said.
Circle’s Jeremy Allaire added that the Solana Pay launch marked “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.”
On Solana Pay’s debut launch, the Circle-issued stablecoin USDC will be the primary medium of exchange, but with the support of Phantom and FTX, many more Solana-compatible digital assets could gain traction in the future. After partnering with both Visa and Mastercard last year, Circle’s backing for the product is the latest in a series of huge developments in the payments market.
To increase performance and scalability, Solana employs a combination of proof-of-stake (PoS) and proof-of-history (PoH) consensus methods. As a result, the network claims to be the world’s fastest blockchain, with a transaction rate of 65,000 per second (TPS).