This week, Coinbase Commerce, a popular platform that helps merchants accept cryptocurrency payments in a completely decentralized way, has integrated Dai as a payment method. Merchants around the world can now accept Dai as a payment for goods and services in minutes. Moreover, merchants do not pay a fee to use Coinbase Commerce, making onboarding free in addition to simple and secure. 

This integration opens some of the web’s biggest shops, including those on Shopify and WooCommerce, to Decentralized Finance (DeFi) users and others who want to transact securely using a decentralized stablecoin as a payment method. In turn, it introduces merchants to a growing segment of the cryptocurrency market, allowing them to bridge the gap between DeFi dapp entrepreneurs and their own “real world” businesses. 

With just a few clicks, merchants can add a ‘pay with crypto’ button to their checkout process, or choose to accept Dai only. Since all payments received are fully controlled by merchants, shop owners can also put their capital to use and earn the Dai Savings Rate (currently 7.5%) on the Dai they receive simply by transferring it to the Dai Savings Rate (DSR) contract via the Maker Protocol. No minimum deposit is required to earn the DSR, and merchants can withdraw any amount or all of their Dai at any time.

The DeFi Advantage

Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is a popular movement sparked by the benefits that cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies bring to the financial services sector. Specifically, DeFi allows for inexpensive and more efficient and transparent financial products. The most useful decentralized digital currencies, like Dai, improve financial services because they level the playing field and remove the need for intermediaries. Without third party interference, individuals can simply transact peer-to-peer.

With funds in the DeFi space recently eclipsing $1 billion, this integration of Dai—the most used cryptocurrency in DeFi—should increase the DeFi community’s already high degree of confidence in the stablecoin. Through the Shopify and WooCommerce marketplaces alone, shoppers at over 800,000 stores and 3 million shops, respectively, could potentially be exposed to Dai. That amount of access should lead to an increase in Dai adoption and contribute to the growth and vibrancy of the entire Maker ecosystem. 

To discover more ways to use Dai, explore the 400+ live integrations of Dai via the Maker ecosystem page. To build your own dapps on the Maker Protocol, review the developer guides and tutorials.