Solana Pay Integrates Interactive Transaction Requests Feature for Merchants & Devs

Solana (SOL) has announced that its low-cost payments solution, Solana Pay now has an interactive transaction requests feature for merchants and developers. With Solana Pay transaction requests, merchants will now be able to offer their customers dynamic experiences and more, according to a blog post on May 4, 2022.

Solana Pay Transaction Requests

Solana Pay, a payments protocol designed to facilitate cost-efficient, instantaneous payments for businesses and merchants, now comes with a new feature designed to enable two-way interactions between merchants and consumers. 

While the Solana Pay platform previously supported only simple one-way transfers of solana (SOL), USD Coin (USDC), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and other digital assets, the new transaction requests feature allows for an interactive request between a merchant’s checkout app and a mobile wallet of a customer, making it possible for businesses to offer their clients unique experiences.

With the new transaction requests feature, businesses can now offer their customers customized rewards such as NFTs, tokenized loyalty programs, and more, in five easy steps:

• The customer scans a merchant QR code, which their Solana Pay wallet app interprets as a Solana Pay transaction request URL. 
• The wallet makes an HTTP request to the merchant API 
• The merchant receives the wallet address in the request and can respond with a customized transaction for the customer.
• The wallet shows the transaction details to the customer just like any other transaction, and can also display a merchant URL and icon.
• The customer approves (or declines) the transaction, signing with their private key, and sending the transaction to the network.

That’s not all, the team says the new transaction requests feature enables merchants to put in place a true bi-directional communication channel with customers, atomically mint an NFT or transfer loyalty tokens to a customer at the point of sale and more.

The team says the introduction of the transaction requests feature will enable merchants to carry out composable DeFi transactions involving borrowing, token swaps, escrow, privacy, and more, at the point of sale, enabling refunds, chargebacks, insurance, buy-now-pay-later, and more.

“Merchants can opt to pay for transaction fees, token account creation, and NFT minting on behalf of their customers, so they don’t need SOL in their wallet, thereby reducing the friction of interacting with the Solana ecosystem, Merchants can decline to respond to a transaction request, which could be used to allow permissioned payments, such as in cases where authentication is required for compliance,” the team added.

The Solana ecosystem has witnessed increased adoption in recent years, and the network is now home to some of the top NFT and play-to-earn gaming projects, though not without its fair share of network glitches.

In April 2022, OpenSea, the world’s largest non-fungible tokens marketplace, OpenSea added support for Solana-based digital collectibles. 

According to a recent report by crypto.news, Yield Guild Games South East Asia (YGG SEA) has signed a partnership deal with Solana Ventures, to bolster Southeast Asia’s blockchain gaming industry.

At the time of writing, SOL is the 7th-largest cryptocurrency in the world, with a market capitalization of $28.23 billion and the price of SOL is hovering around $83.41, according to CoinMarketCap.