Ensuring that cryptocurrencies will be embraced by the masses will not be an easy feat. In fact, most merchants have shown very little interest in anything related to cryptocurrencies. Developing new PoS solutions for in-store cryptocurrency payments is an opportunity well worth exploring. For Monero, it seems such a solution is almost ready. Known as Kasisto, this new tool seems to pack a lot of punch under the hood.
The Kasisto PoS Solution for Monero Payments
Most people will agree that paying in-store with cryptocurrencies is a big challenge right now. More specifically, there are only so many companies willing to explore this payment option. Finding a convenient way to accept such payments has not been easy whatsoever. After all, even accepting Bitcoin can be a tedious process, as the number of PoS solutions for the world’s leading cryptocurrency is very limited. In most cases, retailers must manually create invoices to be paid through Bitcoin payment processors, which is anything but fun to do.
The same struggle applies to virtually every altcoin in existence. Not only do altcoins have a lot less appeal than Bitcoin in this regard, but there are no real PoS payment solutions at present. It is a bit unclear why so few companies will explore this particular industry, as it seems that plenty of opportunities abound. One would expect to see more PoS solutions for Bitcoin and perhaps other currencies in the near future.
During the recent 34th Chaos Communication Congress, the Monero team demonstrated an interesting solution to this problem. Their Kasisto PoS solution is currently being used by Berlin’s Room77, a venue that is famous for accepting cryptocurrency payments for quite some time now. Their willingness to experiment with Monero payments is a big boon for this particular cryptocurrency. After all, Monero doesn’t have the appeal that Bitcoin has, even though it is the only fungible cryptocurrency out there right now.
With that in mind, it is almost surprising to see such a point-of-sale solution come to market for Monero. The short demo video shared on Reddit shows that the solution works perfectly and transactions are confirmed pretty quickly. There is also the option to manually add a tip to one’s payment, although doing so is not required by any means. The project has been getting tested on the Monero testnet for quite some time now, and all of the results so far are promising. There is also a GitHub repo for this project’s source code so that everyone can see nothing nefarious is going on.
Kasisto currently completes a Monero transaction in 22 seconds or less. All one needs is a mobile wallet capable of scanning a QR code. Kasisto checks with the mempool in order to confirm each transaction. Spending small amounts should be no problem regardless of network confirmations, as it seems the risk of double spending Monero is fairly low. Double spends are immediately rejected by the Monero daemon, making this all but a trivial issue.
In terms of POS cryptocurrency systems, Kasisto certainly raises the bar. The fact that it has native Monero support is great news for anyone who values privacy or even anonymity. There is still some work to be done before this solution will ever go mainstream, but the team is currently working on improving the overall functionality even further. Full offline support and some app-like features are at the top of the priority list for the time being. It is also possible we may see a dedicated app, although that is not a priority as of right now.
