Getting Started with Ink Pay
Ink Pay was released this week on the Coinbase Wallet app, so I thought it’d be a perfect time to give an overview of how Ink Pay works.
For the uninitiated, Ink Pay is a payment method for buying and selling that allows sellers to build up reputation that they own and can take anywhere. It’s built on top of Ink Protocol, so both payments and reputation are decentralized and stored on the Ethereum blockchain. Currently, supported payment currencies are ETH and XNK.
Using Ink Pay, you can confidently buy and sell with people you’ve never met. Sellers can put their best foot forward by showcasing their public reputation, and buyers can dig into a seller’s feedback history to know who they’re dealing with.
First, Some Basics
Before jumping into a short tutorial, it’s important to understand a few things about Ink Pay.
- Ink Pay is not a standalone app you download. Instead, it’s a decentralized app (Dapp) that sits at https://inkpay.app. To use it, you need a browser with web3 support. On your computers, we recommend Chrome or Firefox with the MetaMask extension. On your phones or tablets, we recommend the Coinbase Wallet app (not to be confused with the main Coinbase app).
- You don’t have to “sign up” for Ink Pay in the traditional sense. As long as your wallet (from MetaMask or Coinbase Wallet) is unlocked, you’re in! Your wallet acts as your authentication, so there isn’t a password to remember. There isn’t a separate login either, since your Ethereum address acts as your identity.
- Nearly all actions on Ink Pay write directly to the Ethereum blockchain, so you’ll need some Ether (ETH) to pay gas costs.
Step by Step Buying and Selling
Buyer Step 1: Check out your seller
Wherever you trade, ask your seller if they accept Ink Pay and get their profile link, Ethereum address, or QR code. Open up inkpay.app and use the Seller Lookup tool to view their profile.
On their profile, you’ll be able to see a few important pieces of information:
- Their reputation, which consists of their average feedback score and the number of ratings they’ve received. In this case, the seller has completed 2 transactions and has an average score of 5.0 (the highest possible).
- Their entire selling history, complete with details of each transaction. Over time, you should be looking for sellers who’ve dealt with many different buyers over an extended period of time.
- Additional details about the seller, including their nickname, profile photo, location, websites, and bio.
This seller looks trustworthy! Let’s pay them…
Buyer Step 2: Create a payment
Creating a payment on Ink Pay is super simple. Just enter or scan your seller’s Ethereum address, choose your amount (in XNK or ETH), and add a few details about the transaction.
Next, review the details and confirm the Ethereum transaction. In this example, the buyer is using MetaMask.
Once you’ve sent payment, notify your seller.
Seller’s Step: Accept the payment
Because buyers can leave feedback for sellers, we need to make sure the seller is aware of and agrees to the transaction. Otherwise, anybody would be able to send a small amount and leave malicious feedback for a transaction that never happened!
Sellers will see incoming payments on Ink Pay and be able to accept them. Accepting a payment is an Ethereum transaction, and in this example the seller is using Coinbase Wallet:
Once the Ethereum transaction is confirmed, the seller receives their 200 XNK and delivers the goods.
Buyer Step 3: Leave feedback and enjoy!
After the seller delivers the items and the buyer verifies everything is good, the buyer can leave feedback on the transaction. Feedback ratings are on a scale of 1 to 5 stars, and an additional comment can be left too. Just like Yelp or Amazon reviews, this helps future buyers learn more about the seller before they pay.
Summary
Buying and selling with Ink Pay is a snap, and has huge benefits.
- Cryptocurrency payments are quick and secure. There’s no such thing as a bounced check, funny money, or a chargeback.
- The more you use Ink Pay as a seller, the greater the benefit. Build a public reputation that YOU own, and take it wherever you sell.
- Besides the necessary Ethereum network fees, there’s no cost to send and receive payments.
I hope this post has given you a better understanding of what Ink Pay is. We’re continually working on updates and improvements as well, so stay tuned!
Start using it now at https://inkpay.app now or drop us a line at help@inkpay.app. We’d love to hear from you. :-)
View the example above
On Ink Pay, buyers and sellers are identified through their Ethereum addresses. To view the seller’s profile, simply head to https://inkpay.app/0x2313D5D82a40E296Bb116Bd994D20f6ED1E8a415.
The transaction shown can be viewed at https://inkpay.app/t/31. Scroll down to the transaction history if you’d like to poke around the Ethereum transactions too! 🤓
