Solana has launched a new peer-to-peer payments protocol with support from Circle, FTX, and Phantom. Dubbed “Solana Pay,” the payments protocol is decentralized, and lets e-commerce platforms and merchants accept payments through crypto wallets. In addition, according to Solana, the protocol would open up more interactions and deal-making options for users. Furthermore, merchants and customers will also be able to use digital assets like Circle’s USDC stablecoin to facilitate payments and sales.
To begin using Solana Pay, merchants will set up a barcode that customers can use to make payments from their crypto wallets. Solana Pay’s ability to interact with customers through their crypto wallets creates veritable avenues for the distribution of other digitized assets. These include NFTs, loyalty reward tokens, and exclusive offers.
Solana Pay benefits from the seamless and fast smart contract Solana blockchain. Colloquially referred to as the “Ethereum Killer,” the blockchain can process up to 65,000 transactions per second with settlement at only 400 milliseconds.
In addition, Solana’s low transaction fees give it a comparative advantage over Ethereum. For instance, Solana averages $0.00025, while Ethereum runs to almost $15 per transaction. Solana’s native token SOL surged from $1.50 at the beginning of the year to around $260. However, the general crypto slump has set it back by more than half to $107.
