U.S. merchants can now accept payments in crypto using Dappos, free of charge
Dappos is the new app for merchants who are located in the U.S. and have been looking for ways to accept cryptocurrency at their stores as payment for goods and services. The software, which is developed by and can be accessed on the CryptoForMerchants.com website, allows merchants to accept stable cryptocurrencies such as USDC (US Dollar Coin) without losing value during the time of transaction.
The customer makes payment by scanning a QR code provided
Merchants are able to receive cryptocurrency as payment from their customers and then convert the cryptocurrency to dollars and transfer them to their bank accounts. The app does not charge any transaction fee although there is a small network fee (usually regarded as mining fee paid to miners to confirm blockchain-based transactions) of a few cents to be paid by merchants.
It is a POS app and according to a developer and promoter of this technology called Gerald Zuckerwar, supporting payments via USDC for merchants eliminates the risk of volatility with other cryptos, which makes crypto payments unattractive for many merchants. He said volatility made other cryptocurrencies unattractive for merchant adoption.
USDC is a stable coin pegged to the dollar, which can be bought and sold for $1. It was launched last year by Circle and Coinbase, who are members of the CENTRE Consortium. It is issued by regulated and licensed financial institutions that maintain full reserves of the equivalent fiat currency. This is the reason they recommend it for merchant payments according to Zuckerwar.
Dappos is a web-based application and can be accepted by merchants directly into their Coinbase account, convert it 1:! and transfer it to a bank, all without fees. At the same time, Zuckerwar said they recommend Coinbase as merchants' cryptocurrency bank because it is based in the USA, is well-established with 20 million customers already and are founding members of the Circle Consortium, which issues USDC, and they have lowest fee structure since there are no fees to buy/sell USDC or to transfer fiat dollars to/from a bank via ACH.
Customers are able to connect it to with their Coinbase accounts through the Dappos setup process. The instructions for set up are located on this link. On visiting the web app page, a merchant can log into the web app via email without signup option. They can then head to account settings to set payment currency from the 9 fiat options (including EUR, GBP, JPY, AUD, HKD, and KRW) to which conversion will be made from crypto payments, and the Ethereum address to which payments will be made. They can then add tokens they accept for payments. The app also lets them track transactions and their histories.
Although Zuckerwar said they recommend Coinbase, merchants can also select and insert any Ethereum wallet address but it only accepts ETH and ERC-20 tokens. Merchants can also add in their mobile wallet if Dappos is opened in a mobile DApp browser. DAI is also set as a default payment token and cannot be deleted. The app also allows adding of products items for sale on the menu as well as the items' prices.
The developers plan on adding more functionality such as transaction reporting and a 99.95% uptime guarantee. They will also be adding features recommended by merchants, according to Zuckerwar.
To receive payments, a merchant opens the app and adds or clicks on any previously added items, plus its price, which also is automatically added on the cart with the total amount displayed. The customer then scans a code to pay.
The app monitors the blockchain till confirmation of transactions, with the first confirmation going through within 30 seconds. It shows the amount received and what is pending. Zuckerwar said although blockchain transaction confirmations take around 3-1/2 minutes to confirm, this can be reduced to about 1 minute if the customer is offering a higher network fee to miners when they transmit funds.
Trust Wallet has that functionality, and Coinbase is planning to add functionality to their wallet. He said blockchain is a good option for merchants "sick and tired of credit card companies skimming huge fees" and Dappos will help them out in this regard.
