Helio has made a series of updates to its Solana Pay Shopify plugin, the crypto payments company announced Thursday morning.
The plugin allows businesses on the e-commerce platform to accept payments via the Solana network. The plugin charges a transaction fee of 0.75%, which is lower than the 1.5-3.5% normally charged by credit cards.
The new version of the plugin adds “hundreds” of cryptocurrencies that can be used for payments. A video of possible cryptocurrencies shared with Blockworks included bitcoin, ether, solana, PayPal’s PYUSD, and memecoins including ORE and MOTHER. Previously the plugin only accepted USDC.
Using Jupiter, merchants can automatically exchange the variety of accepted coins for stablecoins.
The update also allows users to expand cryptocurrency in their wallet using fiat and merchants to automatically transfer cryptocurrency into fiat. Beyond that, the update creates a more streamlined checkout process and allows merchants to offer features like NFT airdrops and enable customer listings.
To be clear, Shopify itself does not assist with upgrades. Anyone can request to add a plugin to the Shopify App Store. The Solana Foundation led Shopify’s initial integration with Solana Pay created by Solana Labs in August, Helio CEO Stijn Paumen told Blockworks. Helio took over the Solana Foundation’s integration operations in December 2023, Paumen said.
If there’s an institution-related aspect here, it’s perhaps that PYUSD on Solana now has a payments-related use case, something PayPal had hoped for when it rolled out in late May.
To know more: PayPal’s stablecoin becomes operational on Solana
Since taking over in December 2023, Helio’s Shopify plugin has seen $50 million in sales through partnerships with more than 200 stores, the company said in a press release. Entrepreneur and anti-aging influencer Bryan Johnson is a Helio-Solana Pay customer, and Solana Labs used the plugin to request pre-orders for the second Solana Mobile device.
Payments on Ethereum, BNB and more than 10 other blockchains are coming to the Shopify plugin soon, Paumen said.
