E-commerce juggernaut Shopify has broadened its array of payment options by introducing Solana Pay, enabling countless merchants to embrace cryptocurrency transactions. This integration initiates with the acceptance of payments in USD Coin (USDC), a stablecoin.
As reported by TechCrunch, the Solana Pay platform intends to expand its repertoire to encompass various altcoins over the next several months. These include Solana's native token, SOL, as well as the meme-inspired token, Bonk.
Josh Fried, affiliated with Solana Labs, aptly dubbed the fusion of digital assets and payment solutions as the "killer app for crypto." He emphasized the significance of this development and urged stakeholders to prioritize it.
Fried went on to underline the potential of Solana Pay to significantly diminish transaction expenses in contrast to credit card processing fees. The network's average transaction fee stands at an astonishingly low $0.00025 per transaction, whereas credit card processing fees span between 1.5% to 3.5%. Illustrating further, during the last epoch, Solana's users paid a nominal average transaction fee of 0.000009664 SOL.
Shopify's prominence in the e-commerce landscape could serve as a testing ground for the Solana blockchain. Historically, Solana encountered challenges related to reliability and uptime. Anatoly Yakovenko, the co-founder, attributed these issues to the network's economical transactions.
However, recent performance data paints a more positive picture. Solana's latest performance report highlights 100% uptime since February 25, spanning an entire quarter without any outages. A single outage incident in February led to the network being offline for nearly 19 hours.
Solana Pay, launched in February 2022, emerges as a peer-to-peer payment infrastructure. It empowers merchants to facilitate and conclude payment transactions involving a range of digital assets. This platform materialized through a collaboration involving Solana Labs, Checkout.com, Circle, Citcon, and wallet integrations provided by Phantom.
Shopify's extensive reach in the e-commerce realm is underscored by its estimation that approximately 10% of all e-commerce transactions in the United States, equivalent to $444 billion of the global e-commerce market, transpire through its platform. The company has demonstrated an incremental adoption of Web3 solutions, evident in its incorporation of blockchain commerce tools tailored for Web3-oriented stores, as well as features enabling crypto wallet connectivity.
In summary, Shopify's strategic integration of Solana Pay introduces a new chapter in the evolution of cryptocurrency payments within the e-commerce sphere. This move aligns with Shopify's broader integration of Web3 solutions and signifies a notable step toward the mainstream adoption of crypto transactions in everyday commerce.
