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The Solana ecosystem keeps evolving as one of the fastest, cheapest and most scalable networks available. Thus, it is no surprise that new tools and features are constantly built on it, improving even further the possibilities on the Solana blockchain.
In this article, you will learn about an interesting project recently launched on the network called Solana Pay. Solana Pay promises to not only facilitate transactions on Solana but also to make them even cheaper and with a net-zero environmental impact.
So, let’s dive into Solana Pay!
Solana has already brought great innovation to the blockchain ecosystem by making it more scalable, accessible, and decentralized. The Proof-of-Stake and Proof-of-History network manages to offer fast, cheap, environmentally friendly transactions to a fast-growing community. Yet, bringing the impact of Solana outside the crypto community is still a challenge. Expanding Solana’s advantages to mainstream businesses is a goal for the network. In web 2, online payment methods were key to integrating the internet into mainstream businesses - and the same might be true for web 3. A Solana payment platform might be the next step for Solana to expand to the masses. The good news? One is already among us: Solana Pay.
Solana Pay is the first decentralized permissionless payment rail built on Solana that allows businesses and customers to make and accept payments that are immediate and low cost. The decentralized payments platform claims to support 65,000 transactions per second, creating a seamless experience and has zero impact on the environment, meaning that it is carbon neutral. The company explains that the latter was achieved by harnessing the power of the Solana blockchain network.
However, the factor that makes Solana Pay stand out the most is how easy it is for businesses to implement the product. Any business can smoothly integrate Solana Pay into their app / website or use it for in-person payments. This means Solana Pay can be easily used in a large range of businesses, from DApps built on Solana to traditional retailers. To do so, one only needs a Solana wallet, and users can even pay through a QR code.
This accessibility allows more businesses to accept payments without needing to go through complex protocols to do so. Needless to say, this is a huge step not only for Solana but for the whole crypto community. That is because Solana Pay has the potential to expand the usage of crypto payments to a whole new set of businesses.
While Solana Pay looks like a natural step for the Solana blockchain, it presents a great potential for the network and crypto payments in general. Some publications even compared Solana Pay to PayPal, stating it can do to crypto the same as the latter did to internet payments. It is still early to state how much Solana Pay can expand the crypto payments usage. However, the affordability, speed, low-environment impact and simplicity of the platform make it a potential game-changer for the blockchain industry.
With so many great and innovative features, Solana Pay presents many advantages for businesses and customers. However, there is a level of risk with using crypto payments that should be considered. Thus, these are the pros and cons of Solana Pay:
Because Solana Pay is built on Solana, it is faster and cheaper than its counterparts on other blockchains. It is also extremely environmentally friendly, which is often not the case in popular networks such as Proof Of Work (PoW) chains like Ethereum and Bitcoin.
It allows users to make immediate payments in SOL or other SPL tokens without any third party involved, such as banks or payment processors.
Different from credit cards and payments processors, Solana Pay is free of fees, allowing the merchant to access the full amount paid, and the customer to truly pay only for the product. The only fee existent is the transaction fee of the Solana network, which is worth 5000 Lamports or 0.000005 SOL, that is less than $0.0002.
Solana Pay offers detailed - and private - reports on every transaction that includes information such as wallet destination, currency, amount and more.
Solana Pay and the Solana network are in their early days of development. Thus, their technology is still being perfected and users may face the risks of experiencing some issues such as protocol errors or network congestion. While rare, these can result in a bad user experience.
You need a crypto wallet to use Solana Pay, which can be challenging for users that are not familiar with the blockchain ecosystem. The good side is that there are many wallets that make the process quite simple and offer easy-to-follow guides to beginners.
While Solana Pay might be complex on the backend, integrating it into your business is quite simple. With only a few steps you can allow your customers to pay in crypto and enjoy all the advantages that come with it. The process is slightly different for merchants and developers, but both have something in common: the need to have a Solana wallet.
As of June 2022, Solana Pay supports the following wallets:
- Phantom
- Solflare
- Glow
- Crypto(.)com
While all wallets have pros and cons, if you are a beginner in crypto, Phantom and Solflare are probably the most user-friendly ones. They both offer very easy-to-follow guides and the whole process of creating a wallet won’t take you more than a few minutes.
If you wish to learn more about Solana wallets before deciding which one to go with, check out this article we have with all the wallets available on Solana.
Once you created your wallet you can follow the GitHub guides provided by Solana Pay to integrate it into your business. This part of the process is different if you wish to integrate the platform into your website or app, or to in-person payments.
To integrate Solana Pay with your website or app, you will only need to integrate their JavaScript SDK to your platform. Once that is done you only link with your Solana wallet and you are good to go. The link offers instructions and an example so the process can be done smoothly.
For in-person payments, you can start using the Solana Pay Point of Sale app. While the instructions might seem complicated at a first glance, if you follow the step-by-step guide, it is quite easy and you will be set up in a few minutes. You can even generate a Solana Pay QR code to charge customers the intended amount.
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Please note that none of this is to be considered financial nor investment advice. We highly advise you to always do your own research (’DYOR’) before interacting with any of the projects or tools we write about. Crypto is a highly dynamic and fast paced environment with lots of moving parts that can quickly change.