CoinPayments announces integration of FIO Protocol
CoinPayments, one of the leading cryptocurrency-based payments platforms, has announced the integration of the Foundation of Wallet Interoperability (FIO) Protocol on its platform.
This integration is expected to streamline the process of making online payments for purchases at merchants and businesses through the use of cryptocurrencies. Right now, the payment process varies according to the merchant and the crypto that is chosen for payment leading to a variety of different processes at each merchant leading to a lot of confusion for the user. This can be avoided by streamlining this process and ensuring that a similar checkout and payment process exists across multiple merchants. The FIO Protocol has been made available to over 100,000 merchants across 200 countries so far while CoinPayments processed $26 million worth of eCommerce transactions in crypto during the first half of 2021 showing the growing popularity of cryptos as a form of payment.
Luke Stokes, Managing Director, Foundation for Interwallet Operability said, “CoinPayments and FIO share the same vision to take digital currencies out of the realm of theory and put them to everyday practical use by the general public. Traditional financial services and payment providers exclude billions of people. Cryptocurrencies, underpinned by blockchain technology, have the potential to link [online] merchants with their customer base free from centralized third parties, potentially unleashing a wave of economic opportunities and growth that would have been inconceivable a decade ago.”
The process of payments through crypto is streamlined by issuing a simple, human-readable FIO crypto handle for each user which they would need to enter which checking out. In the backend, this would be linked to the user’s respective crypto wallet and this handle would help to identify the user for the payment platform. This would help to avoid confusion and the need to read or write or process very complicated addresses and public keys which could lead to the risk of losses during transactions. This handle also streamlines the process of refunds as the merchants simply need to issue a refund to the FIO crypto handle and the refunds would then automatically be processed back into the users’ wallet.
It is believed that this partnership would help the users to use cryptos for payments much more confidently which would in turn help to increase their usage and volumes and gradually move cryptocurrencies to the mainstream.
