Opera, the web innovator with over 319M users worldwide, unveils Minipay — a new web3 payments wallet built on Celo.
Offering “instant” financial transactions, MiniPay is integrated “with the Opera Mini browser for Android users, making it easier and more affordable for individuals to send and receive funds, all leveraging Celo’s core infrastructure benefits and features,” including:
- Sub-cent gas fees (and the ability to pay for gas using ERC-20 tokens, e.g., stablecoins)
- Settlement in seconds (due to 5-second block times)
- Seamless access to Celo’s rich ecosystem of 1,000+ dApps, from locally-focused (e.g., impactMarket) to global decentralized finance (DeFi) blue chips (e.g., Uniswap)
- Celo’s mobile-first compatibility with SocialConnect (a privacy-first naming service protocol that maps wallets to mobile phone numbers) and FiatConnect (an open on-/off-ramp API standard)
Opera, in collaboration with Celo Foundation, designed and built MiniPay, which offers instant wallet-to-wallet fund transfers with minimal fees “using mobile phone numbers and easy onboarding and key backup through Google.”
For on-ramp solutions, Celo’s robust network of FiatConnect partners, such as Fonbnk and Bitmama, helped integrate cUSD, “one of the stable assets on the Mento Protocol, which tracks the value of the US Dollar (USD).”
This easy-to-use wallet enables users of all experience levels to transfer digital assets for everyday use with speed and efficiency through “an intuitive user journey and abstracting the “Connect Wallet” button native to many crypto interfaces.”
As one of the key stewards of the Celo ecosystem, the Celo Foundation is “dedicated to bringing affordable and accessible DeFi to mobile users around the world.”
This work and Opera’s focus on improving access to the digital world are complementary missions, “with an initial partnership dating back to 2021.”
The Celo blockchain, “whose community mission is to create the conditions of prosperity for all, first launched on Earth Day 2020 and sees a thriving ecosystem of active builders, developers, founders, and community members committed to blockchain technology’s positive impact.”
With over 1,000 global projects in more than 150 countries, the Celo blockchain is carbon-negative and mobile-first, “with many enterprise and institutional partners, including Deutsche Telekom, Telefónica, Google Cloud, Grameen Foundation, Kickstarter, and Mercy Corps Ventures.”
Following a vote by the Celo community in July to migrate from a Layer-1 blockchain to an Ethereum Layer-2, the Celo network will “undergo technical upgrades to see increased security and scalability while maintaining low gas fees, bringing more real-world use cases to the Ethereum community.”
This technical migration, “led by the Celo community and core contributors, including cLabs, opens the door for even more Ethereum-compatible dApps to be built for MiniPay, reimagining the future of on-chain finance for community advancement and inclusion in the new digital economy.”
For more details, check here.