Solana Pay, the decentralized payment protocol by Solana Labs, has added its plug-in with Shopify. This strategic integration is designed to allow millions of businesses on its platform to leverage Solana Pay for crypto transactions with zero transaction fees until 2024.
Launched in February 2022, Solana Pay is a peer-to-peer payment infrastructure built on top of the layer-1 blockchain Solana. The initial payment option for this integration is USDC, the second-largest stablecoin by market capitalization of $25.9 billion.
According to Josh Fried, Head of Commerce Business Development, the choice of USDC is ideal given its close ties to the dollar and its regulatory oversight. Most merchants and consumers are more willing to accept the stablecoin, he said. However, he hinted at future considerations of adding cryptocurrencies like SOL and the meme token Bonk (BONK).
Fried branded this integration with Shopify as the “killer app for crypto,” adding that everyone “should be doubling down on this.” Using the Solana Pay option can drastically reduce transaction costs compared to credit card processing fees. The average network cost is $0.00025 per transaction, while credit card processing costs range from 1.5% to 3.5%.
Solana Expands Into New Territory
Over 11.5 million active accounts on Solana will potentially gain access to Shopify businesses, which make up 10% of total U.S. e-commerce and $444 billion of global economic activity.
It is worth noting that Shopify launched its own business credit card for merchants in July. Available in 170 countries, the firm has also made other moves into Web3, such as allowing merchants to add NFT-based loyalty rewards and selling NFTs directly to customers.
Solana Pay is also integrated into the Solana Saga mobile phone and is available on any device connected to a Solana wallet. At the start of August, the Saga had its price slashed down from $999 to $599 at launch.
Meanwhile, the latest partnership could serve as a proving ground for the Solana blockchain. The blockchain has struggled with reliability and uptime issues in previous years. However, recent statistics indicate that network performance is improving, as it reported a 100% uptime in Q2.
