- Utrust, a cryptocurrency payments startup based in Lisbon, Portugal.
- Merchants are becoming more receptive to cryptocurrency settlements.
Elrond, an Ethereum competitor boasting 100,000 transactions per second throughput, has agreed to acquire Utrust, a cryptocurrency payments startup based in Lisbon, Portugal.
The transaction details have been withheld. Early this year, the combined community is scheduled to be notified of the deal’s final mechanics from a token-holder perspective. Elrond and Utrust stated that the goal is to enable online payments to use Web 3, the next generation of the internet built on decentralized apps.
Staking on the blockchain, dubbed Merchant Yield and Decentralized Finance (DeFi), will be available to merchants after Elrond integrates the Utrust payment gateway.
Restructured as an Income Stream
According to the corporations’ Tuesday statement, payment processing services will be repurposed as an income stream for merchants. Both businesses have said that they are willing to cooperate with financial regulators and that the deployment will initially take place in Europe.
Beniamin Mincu, CEO of Elrond Network, says payment processors currently charge merchants 3 to 11 percent of each transaction. This year, Merchant Yield will open beta testing where users will have the ability to select from a spectrum of risk/reward levels, from Elrond’s proof-of-stake blockchain stakes to participation in DeFi protocol.
Sanja Kon, CEO of Utrust, said that merchants are becoming more accepting of cryptocurrency payment settlements. Utrust is an Estonian corporation that accepts payments in Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dash, and USDT and its own UTK token and Elrond eGold (EGLD). In her opinion, corporations invest in the blockchain ecosystem in order to obtain a return on their crypto investment.
