Finance

SOL Price Jumps +5% as Solana Pay Integrates with Shopify to Enable Native Web3 Payments

08/24/2023
Bitcoin Ethereum News
SOL Price Jumps +5% as Solana Pay Integrates with Shopify to Enable Native Web3 Payments

 Key highlights:

  • Solana Pay hooked up with Shopify to enable native Web3 payments.
  • This means all those Shopify merchants, over a million of them, and nearly half a trillion in annual sales, can now accept crypto through Solana’s fast and cheap network.
  • The initial token folks can pay and merchants will receive is USDC, a dollar-pegged stablecoin.

The price of Solana’s SOL token saw a nice 5% pump this week thanks to an exciting new integration with e-commerce giant Shopify. Solana Pay, a decentralized payment app built on the Solana blockchain, is now available as a payment option for the millions of merchants using Shopify.

This integration provides a big boost to Solana’s quest to become the leading platform for fast, cheap payments in the crypto economy. And the markets responded accordingly, with SOL popping from around $20 to over $21 following the announcement.

Solana Pay brings speed and low fees to e-commerce

Solana Pay launched earlier this year as a way for both online and brick-and-mortar merchants to accept cryptocurrency payments from customers. It’s built on Solana, which touts lightning-fast transaction speeds and rock-bottom fees compared to networks like Ethereum.

As Josh Fried from the Solana Foundation explained:

“Solana Pay on Shopify opens up millions of merchants to a more dynamic and efficient payment choice, while consumers get the convenience and increased utility of being able to pay for goods and services with digital dollar currencies.”

The Solana blockchain can handle 50,000 transactions per second and fees are a tiny fraction of a penny, even for complex smart contract executions. So it’s easy to see why they’d want to bring this tech to mainstream e-commerce

Shopify contributes 10% of all online retail in the US and sees nearly half a trillion in sales annually. Integrating with them is a huge vote of confidence for Solana Pay.

Please see the detailed video that Solana’s current and potential investors should watch carefully.

USDC chosen as initial settlement token

While the Solana Pay protocol supports payments in any cryptocurrency, they wisely chose USDC stablecoin as the first settlement option for Shopify.

USDC has key regulatory compliance features and its value is pegged to the US dollar. So for merchants still unsure about crypto volatility, accepting payments that settle to a digital dollar likely feels safer.

But Solana Pay doesn’t rule out expanding to other cryptos like SOL in the future. This allows them to bridge the old fiat world with the rapidly emerging web3 economy.

Will this move SOL price higher?

Solana bulls certainly hope so! SOL has declined nearly 40% over the past year as the broader crypto market remains mired in winter conditions.

After reaching an all-time high above $260 in late 2021, SOL now trades around $22. But helpful integrations like Shopify give the network an opportunity to regain momentum.

As Solana Pay spreads to more and more merchants and users, demand for the underlying SOL token should rise as well. This network effect makes holdling SOL seem like a solid long-term bet, even if prices remain stagnant for now.

Long-Term Price Prediction by Coincodex

Of course, Solana still needs to prove it can scale while avoiding the extended network outages that plagued it last year. But so far in 2023, the team has delivered 99.9% uptime as they resolve the kinks.

Keep an eye on SOL price prediction to see if this Shopify integration provides the spark for Solana’s next major bull run.

Source: https://coincodex.com/article/31565/sol-price-jumps-5-as-solana-pay-integrates-with-shopify-to-enable-native-web3-payments/