Electra (ECA), the open-source digital currency focused on digital payments, is all set to begin beta testing its flagship product ‘ElectraPay’ this month. ElectraPay is a product that will allow merchants to adopt a cryptocurrency payment method. It functions as a financial management system and hence does not require banks, third-party service providers, or credit card companies to process and complete transactions.

In the words of coordinator and Electra board member Robert Bakker, “ElectraPay is a management solution which allows a merchant to be paid in ECA directly in their ElectraPay account. After receiving payment, merchants can then withdraw to their wallet when ready.”

As told by Robert Bakker to CoinTelegraph, ElectraPay is a management solution that allows e-commerce providers to accept the cryptocurrency of Electra through a Woocommerce plugin for Word Press. Bakker mentioned that a proper announcement about the official launch of ElectraPay would be made following the completion of the pilot phase. As per a blog post published by the company on 30 December 2019, the team at Electra is currently looking out for merchants to pilot ElectraPay.

Apart from making it possible for online merchants to accept ECA cryptocurrency, ElectraPay can also process payments while tracking inventory, sales, and customer data. ElectraPay’s main competitor is BitPay, the leading crypto payment processor, that integrates with 40 point-of-sale systems and e-commerce platforms. While Bakker mentioned that Bit Pay is only a wallet, Bit Pay also features embedded invoices and a hosted checkout for merchant websites.

As expressed by Bakker, “ElectraPay has its global wallet where payments are merged. Merchants then decide when and how much ECA they want to withdraw (wherever they want, the wallet can be used to hold, exchange or sell). The merchant is able to decide and have full control of what to do with their earnings.”

Electra became a part of the Global Electronic Association in March. Popular payment gateways and the world’s largest merchants and companies like PayPal, Square, Amazon, and Apple are members of ETA. As mentioned by Bakker, Electra is noted to be the first blockchain project that has joined ETA.

Is ElectraPay Really Necessary?

After major retailers such as Whole Foods, Starbucks, and Nordstrom started accepting Bitcoin as payment, many other online retailers started following it too. Solutions like BitPay and many others make it hard to determine the number of online retailers who will adopt ElectraPay.

Bakker further informed that though Electra will be operating with the help of plugins, there are plans underway to integrate ElectraPay into point-of-sale (POS) machines. To compete with leading crypto payment processors, Bakker mentioned that they plan to extend Electra Pay to e-commerce software such as Shopify and BigCommerce.

As expressed by Bakker, “There are some exciting plans about ElectraPay extending to the mobile app payments industry, making this a one-stop solution for merchants managing their online crypto payments. The project that offers a crypto-pos solution that is also compatible for ElectraPay is not announced yet. This will happen in due course.”