Australia's eftpos is to join the Hedera Governing Council after successfully conducting tests to determine the feasibility of a digital Australian dollar stablecoin for micropayments.
The trials last year showcased the use of a digital wallet loaded with stablecoins for purchasing online content, such as pay-per-page, or streaming services on a pay-per-second basis.
The Hedera Governing Council includes a group of 16 business organisations - Avery Dennison, Boeing, Dentons, Deutsche Telekom, DLA Piper, FIS (WorldPay), Google, IBM, LG Electronics, Magalu, Nomura, Swirlds, Tata Communications, University College London (UCL), Wipro, and Zain Group - overseeing a global network of nodes that will enable fractional micropayments to flow across the decentralised public network. As part of its commitment to the project eftpos will establish its own Hedera network node this year.
Eftpos CEO, Stephen Benton says: “By joining the Hedera Governing Council and running the Australian node, alongside some of the world’s largest and most influential companies, we are excited to participate in the development of next-generation micropayments technology that has the potential to open up entirely new ways of conducting business for Australian enterprises and enable compelling new experiences for Australian consumers."
The Australian company has been pushing a wide-ranging digital strategy that includes mobile wallet Beem It, digital identity services for accessing public and private networks, and a national QR code payments roll out.
The stablecoin project was led by Robert Allen, eftpos' entrepreneur in residence.
“By combining the new eftpos API infrastructure with a consumer wallet-based experience, digital identity, and an AUD-based stablecoin using Hedera’s superfast, secure and low-cost distributed network, the PoC’s objective was demonstrably achieved,” says Allen. “Use cases like this simply are not possible on other public blockchains. Along with several partners, we are now exploring a variety of use cases that this combination of technologies enables and the options to commercialise them."