Solana launches peer-to-peer payment protocol for merchants, consumers

Solana Labs introduced Solana Pay, a new payments protocol that enables peer-to-peer communication between merchants and consumers, the company wrote in a blog post on Tuesday. Specifically, the protocol allows the consumer to send digital dollar currencies, such as USDC (USDC-USD), from their wallet directly into the merchant's account, the blog read. Looking forward, the next phase of development of the protocol will let merchants send digital assets back to the consumers. Note that Solana Pay was developed with support from payments firm Circle and digital asset exchange FTX. Meanwhile, Solana (SOL-USD +2.7%), the native token for Solana Labs, is one of the exceptional gainers intra-day and the past week, even as bitcoin bitcoin (BTC-USD -2.0%) and ethereum (ETH-USD -1.3%) erase earlier gains. Previously, (Jan. 12) BofA analyst Alkesh Shah thought Solana could take market share from ether.