e-commerce Giant Shopify (Shop) is bringing Stablecoin Payments to its merchants beyond the Ethereum Layer-2 network of Crypto Exchange Coinbase (Coin), the company said Thursday.
The consolidation is expected to be rolled out to a limited group of early access merchants on June 12, with more broader availability expected later this year for all merchants using Shopify payments, the company said.
Once the rollout is complete, merchants will be able to accept Circle (CRCL) USDC Token-on-Chain payments while receiving their local currency settlement without any foreign transaction fees. Shopify said it plans to provide 1% cashback to customers paying with USDC. This feature will be released later this year.
Stablecoins are digital tokens whose value is tied to real-world assets, finding a wider range of uses than simply allowing traders to move funds between cryptocurrencies without converting them to Fiat Currency. Usage is explosive, with supply rising 54% year-on-year, and increased payments and international remittances by companies such as PayPal (PYPL) and Grab (Grab).
The new initiative is designed to streamline global commerce with encryption and native infrastructure, reducing costs and increasing efficiency, and is based on a new open source payment protocol developed jointly by Coinbase and Shopify.
Smart Contract and Commerce payment protocols support standard features such as capture delays, tax calculations, and refund processing, and are integrated directly into the merchant’s existing order fulfillment system.
Shopify said it chose the base for a low-cost, fast, and secure trading environment that aims to help bring crypto payments into the mainstream retail experience.
read more: Shopify customers can pay with USDC via Solana Pay