- Solana Pay targets small merchants, e-commerce platforms, and POS providers.
- FTX, Circle, and Checkout.com are initial support partners.
Solana has launched a new peer-to-peer payments protocol called Solana Pay, the blockchain platform said in a press announcement published on Tuesday.
The decentralised P2P protocol is designed to allow merchants and consumers to make direct crypto payments that also settle in crypto, differentiating the payments infrastructure from other offerings that process and settle digital asset payments in fiat.
With Solana Pay, users across the world will be able to access goods and services or accept payments in USD Coin (USDC) and a host of other tokens compatible with the Solana network.
As such, apart from USDC, Solana Pay is also compatible with SOL, the native cryptocurrency on the Solana blockchain. Other tokens include FTT, and SRM, which are native to FTX and Serum respectively.
The project has support from several major players in the crypto space, including Solana Labs, Circle, Checkout.com, and Citcon.
Crypto exchange FTX and digital wallets Phantom and Slope are also providing ecosystem integrations.
Sheraz Shere, the head of payments at Solana Labs said that the new infrastructure allows access to a “simplified framework” where merchants and customers can transact directly without the need to go through intermediaries.
Customers will also benefit from zero fraud liability, speed and seamless, near-zero fee transactions that can be completed online or at points of sale.
To help achieve these benefits, Solana Pay is built on the highly scalable Solana network, which is capable of up to 65,000 transactions per second. Transactions are near-instantaneous, with cost per transaction at a lowly $0.00025 per transaction.
"Lowering transaction costs and improving settlement times is a perfect use case for cryptocurrencies that helps both consumers and merchants," Phantom Chief Product Officer Chris Kalani said.
He added that the global community is set to benefit even more as the adoption and use of cryptocurrencies grows.
