Fantom: The Future of Decentralized Payments
In recent years, Fantom has emerged as a hub for some of the most innovative decentralized finance applications. As a fast, scalable, and secure smart contract platform, it offers many possibilities for businesses and individuals alike.
Payments are one of the most prominent uses of blockchain technology. Given the current banking landscape, the importance of decentralized payment channels to transfer money between individuals and businesses cannot be overstated.
Let’s explore how Fantom is becoming the go-to platform for those seeking decentralized payment services, from seamless invoicing to hassle-free customer payments.
Retreeb — Ethical payment solution
“Every time you pay with Retreeb, we financially support your chosen cause. Without it costing you a single penny.”
Retreeb is a decentralized, simple, and sustainable mobile payment method. The concept is clear; merchants implement Retreeb and take advantage of fees lower than traditional payment processors, such as Visa and MasterCard. 33% of the fee from every transaction is donated to a social project chosen by the customer in the mobile app.
Retreeb is all about change. It aims to revolutionize the way we pay for goods and services while redirecting a third of the fees it earns to good causes. With its focus on sustainability, Retreebs leverages Fantom’s low transaction energy consumption. For example, one Visa transaction consumes up to 52x as much energy as one Fantom transaction.
The future of payments is decentralized, giving both merchants and users complete control of the entire process, and Retreeb is at the forefront of that future.
LlamaPay — Streamed salary payments
“LlamaPay is a multi-chain protocol that allows you to automate transactions and stream them by the second. The recipients can withdraw these funds at any time.”
LlamaPay aims to overhaul the weekly, bi-weekly, and monthly salaries with which we have become familiar. Instead of a recurring one-time salary, employees’ salaries now are streamed to them by the second, which gives them far more control and flexibility. LlamaPay is completely free with no fees at all.
The fundamental principle of cryptocurrencies is the idea of having complete control and ownership over your own capital, and LlamaPay holds true to that principle; for each second of work, you receive immediate compensation without having to wait for weeks to receive your rightful earnings. And no more blowing your salary in a single day once you finally receive it!
Request Finance — Invoicing, payroll, and expenses
“Request Finance is a web application for companies, DAOs, and freelancers to easily manage crypto invoices, salaries, and expenses in a fast, non-custodial, and compliant way.”
Used by the Fantom Foundation itself, Request Finance works much like other invoice solutions that are used across the world, with one major difference: it allows businesses to manage their employee-related finances completely with cryptocurrencies.
Request enables users to submit invoices in cryptocurrencies to companies that owe them money. This allows any employee or freelancer not to mess with bank transfers and keep full control of their money.
Businesses can use Request to create recurring payrolls or oversee and pay expenses with over a hundred tokens, including tokens on Fantom and FTM itself.
Well-crafted user interfaces are a crucial factor in achieving widespread blockchain adoption, and Request excels in this area. In fact, its clean design is a joy to use and does not leave users confused.
To date, over $3 million has been transacted with Fantom through Request Finance, which includes a mix of DAI, FTM, and USDC across several hundred payments!
NOWPayments — Crypto payment gateway
“Whether you want to accept payments in crypto for your business, or crypto donations for your project, or conduct mass payouts - NOWPayments is here for you.”
NOWPayments is a payment service that lets merchants accept cryptocurrencies as payment. With a fee of only 0.4 – 0.5%, it is cheaper than major processors, such as Visa and MasterCard.
With its auto coin conversion feature, NOWPayments enables customers to make payments with any token they prefer, including Fantom. Paired with the recurring payments solution that functions as a subscription service, this offers great flexibility for both merchants and customers.
The mass payments feature lets users send a large number of transactions to several recipients at once, which is useful for employee payrolls, invoice payments, and more.
Most importantly, NOWPayments fulfills the original purpose of cryptocurrencies as all funds received by merchants are non-custodial and untouchable by the platform.
Over the past month, NOWPayments had around 30 partners on Fantom who actively transacted, and the top industries accepting FTM as payment included marketing and gaming!
Travala, a travel-booking platform, uses NOWPayments to offer cryptocurrencies as a payment option. To date, it has processed through Fantom over 120 hotel bookings worth around $500,000 in total and over 80 flights worth around $120,000 in total.
Cask Protocol — Scheduled peer-to-peer payments
“Automate money flows on Web3. Save time, money & effort with automation.”
Cask Protocol is a decentralized, non-custodial protocol for automating the flow of money. Its peer-to-peer payment flow feature allows users to schedule regular payments to any recipient. For example, they can send 100 USDC to their family member’s wallet every week automatically.
To facilitate peer-to-peer payments, users must deposit tokens to their Cask Wallet and set up the recurring payments; the rest is managed by Cask, including the transfers and their gas fees.
Currently, Cask is working on turning its peer-to-peer flows into NFTs that will enable new forms of contribution models and further control for the user.
Paired with Fantom’s low fees and fast finality, Cask ensures seamless money flows.
Why is Fantom perfect for decentralized payments?
As Fantom is a decentralized, scalable, and secure smart contract platform designed to address the limitations of traditional blockchain networks, it is the perfect place to run decentralized payment systems.
Speed
Fantom employs a consensus mechanism based on directed acyclic graphs called Lachesis, which allows for faster transaction confirmation times and near-instant finality, both of which are necessities for a smooth payment experience.
Scalability
Fantom's DAG structure can process many transactions per second, ensuring a fast and efficient network. With the release of the Fantom Virtual Machine and the new storage system, scalability in Fantom will rocket, and payments will not suffer.
Low fees
The Fantom network has minimal transaction fees, commonly far under a cent for a transaction, making it cost-effective for users and businesses to use Fantom for decentralized payments.
Single state
Fantom is a single-state network and does not plan to scale by leveraging subnets, sidenets, or Layer 2s. As a result, decentralized payment applications will always have interoperability.
Security
Fantom uses a leaderless proof-of-stake model to secure its consensus mechanism, making it resistant to malicious actors. This ensures that the network remains trustworthy for conducting payments at all times.
Security tools
Fantom's base layer security consists of Watchdog, an automated auditing tool that monitors smart contracts for vulnerabilities continuously, and Contract Library, a security-focused smart contract analysis tool.
Stay updated by following the Fantom Twitter and be the first to know about any new payment system integration!
