GRAFT Lands New Transaction Milestone, Paving the Way for New Mobile Payments Advances

September 14, 2018 By: Steven Anderson

GRAFT may not be a particularly familiar name just yet, oh no, but it recently tipped us off about a point that could make it a real name to watch in the near future. That point in question is a significant milestone for a blockchain payment network operation: the first instant payment made on a “decentralized payment network.”

GRAFT, or Global Real-time Authorizations and Funds Transfers, represents a universal payment blockchain system designed to provide “last-mile” services for other cryptocurrencies. Essentially, it allows for a seamless bridge between cryptocurrency—from bitcoin to Litecoin to Dogecoin and beyond—to fiat currency, whatever that currency might be in a particular region. Rewards programs are also handled to give retailers more reason to put the system to work.

The payment GRAFT made was an end-to-end instant payment, or at least as instant as a blockchain network gets right now, which is a two-second duration. Not exactly instant, but still pretty close. More importantly, it represents a major step forward, and gets GRAFT that much closer to building a truly decentralized payment network.

Dan Itkis, GRAFT’s co-creator, noted “GRAFT is producing a real time authorization and brokering system (similar to how credit card networks function) that not only addresses the issues that have been stopping merchants from accepting digital assets but opens up the entire payment processing space to a shared economy model, similar to what Uber and Airbnb have done for taxi and hotel industries. The ability to both accept payments and do the exchange in real time is truly the first-of-a-kind game-changer type of solution for the cryptocurrency space.”

While this is the first time such a system has been set up over a blockchain network, efforts to rapidly convert cryptocurrency to fiat currency have been running for a while. While this is a big achievement it’s worth wondering if it may have come too late to be of much use. Still, there’s no doubt that GRAFT has pulled something significant off here.

The question remains, however: has it achieved this first-of-its-kind game-changer in time to really be of use? Only time will tell if GRAFT becomes the new standard, or one possibility among several.