SoFi, the first nationally chartered bank in the U.S. to offer crypto trading, is expanding on-chain support for its SoFIUSD stablecoin. The announcement was made by Ben Reynolds, SoFi’s head of big business banking on Tuesday.
The stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar and built on the Ethereum was launched in December last year. Solana’s quick settlement speed and near-zero transaction costs were cited by Reynolds among key reasons for SoFIUSD’s expansion to the Solana chain.
According to Reynolds, “Solana is the right chain to use for payments.”
As of May this year, Solana’s stablecoin ecosystem has emerged among the most active ones in the entire crypto industry. USDT and USDC — two of the largest stablecoins in existence — are both supported on Solana.
Solana’s network is capable of processing thousands of transactions per second for fractions of a cent, that has elevated its position among stablecoin issuers as a favourable choice. Other blockchains like Ethereum, on the other hand, are associated with slower speeds and higher costs.
In August last year, PayPal also tapped Solana to expand its PayPalUSD’s on-chain support. At the time, the U.S.-based fintech giant had said that Solana’s capability to tackle a heavy flow of commerce and microtransactions which gave it an edge over other blockchain.
By launching its stablecoin on Solana, SoFi will be positioning Solana’s blockchain network as the engine for its new Big Business Banking platform.This enterprise platform launched in April is aimed at transitioning traditional banking and digital asset services within one regulated ecosystem.
With the Solana integration, institutional SoFi clients will be able to settle millions of dollars in SoFiUSD anyday, regardless of weekends or traditional bank holidays.
Earlier this year, SoFi partnered Mastercard to utilize SoFiUSD on Solana as a settlement currency across Mastercard’s global payment network.
With SoFiUSD, the chartered bank had taken its first steps into the stablecoin arena, which as of Tuesday stands atop the valuation of $317 billion, as per CoinGecko.
“The launch of SoFiUSD builds on this momentum and accelerates SoFi’s strategy to build modern infrastructure that bridges traditional banking with the next generation of on-chain technology,” the platform had said at the time.