The smartphone division of Solana Labs, Solana Mobile, handled more than $20 million in transactions in collaboration with Shopify and USDC, the second-biggest stablecoin based on the dollar. According to Solana Labs co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, 51% of Chapter 2’s payments were made with USDC and there were no additional processing fees.
With no processing fees, Solana Mobile handled over $20 million in USDC payments.
During the pre-order phase of the phone, Solana Mobile, the Solana Labs company in charge of creating and manufacturing Chapter 2, the upcoming Solana phone, was paid in excess of $20 million in USDC without having to pay any processing fees. Co-founder of Solana Labs Anatoly Yakovenko described how Shopify, which provides several plugins for constructing an online store and accepting cryptocurrency payments straight with Solana Pay, made this feasible.
Although credit card payments were an option for Chapter 2, which recently hit the 100,000 pre-order milestone, 51% of buyers chose to use USDC, a stablecoin based on the dollar, according to Yakovenko. “The revolution in cryptocurrency payments is here,” he emphasizes.
The expenses of handling the other 49% of the payments made with credit cards were contrasted with the costs of handling these stablecoin payments. Yakovenko proclaimed:
With almost the same volume, the credit card sales cost us more than $600k in fees. Which equates to three engineers working full time.
Yakovenko is not the first one who has suggested using cryptocurrencies as a substitute to help consumers and businesses that accept payments save money. According to a new analysis by U.S.-based exchange Coinbase, consumers could have saved as least $74 billion in 2022 if they had used cryptocurrency instead of credit cards for payment.
The $126 billion in fees that merchants spent to process these credit card transactions during the same time period would be insignificant if cryptocurrencies were used. Additionally, utilizing credit cards has drawbacks for retailers because, aside from weekends and holidays, it can take up to 4 days for the money to appear in their accounts. In contrast, cryptocurrency can be accessed very instantly.
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