TL;DR:
- Trezor and WalletConnect Pay ran a live stablecoin payments pilot at WalletCon and EthCC Cannes, moving beyond card-only checkout.
- WalletConnect reported 100% successful transactions, 100% USDC settlement and payments clearing across Ethereum, Base, Polygon, Optimism and Arbitrum.
- Customer feedback showed real demand for wallet-based payments, while uneven wallet-layer UX remains the key area to improve before broader online and retail deployment across more merchant contexts over time.
WalletConnect Pay and Trezor turned a standard event-booth checkout into a live stablecoin payments pilot at WalletCon and EthCC Cannes, moving from card-only sales to wallet-based crypto checkout within hours. The setup let Trezor accept stablecoin payments directly from any WalletConnect Pay-compatible wallet, without asking buyers to download something new or forcing the booth team into bespoke integration work. Crypto checkout became a real point-of-sale test, not a controlled demo. The intriguing part is how quickly customer behavior changed once payment expectations finally matched the self-custody audience standing at the counter.
Stablecoin Checkout Moves From Novelty to Expectation
Trezor’s rationale was tightly aligned with its self-custody mission: buyers already managing assets in wallets could purchase hardware wallets using the same ownership-first rails. WalletConnect Pay supported any wallet and any chain, while settling payments to the merchant in stablecoins. The operational lift stayed deliberately small, which matters because event teams do not have the luxury of debugging complex infrastructure while managing crowds, product questions and live purchases. Trezor’s open question was whether a flow that looked clean on paper could withstand a noisy, high-traffic booth environment.
The numbers made the pilot hard to dismiss. WalletConnect reported 100% successful transactions across the pilot, zero failed transactions and 100% settlement in USDC, regardless of the buyer’s network. Ethereum accounted for 84% of total transaction value, while Base matched Ethereum on payment count but skewed toward smaller, faster transactions. Multi-chain payments cleared through one merchant flow, spanning Ethereum, Base, Polygon, Optimism and Arbitrum, all settling to the same merchant address without additional integration. That is precisely the kind of abstraction merchants need before crypto payments can scale beyond experimentation.
Customer feedback exposed the gap WalletConnect Pay is trying to close. During card-only stretches, interested buyers hesitated at checkout, with some reportedly walking away because they wanted to pay in crypto. After crypto payments were enabled, some returned specifically because the option was available. Demand was visible at the till, although the pilot still surfaced uneven wallet-layer experiences, with some wallets completing instantly and others requiring extra steps. Trezor remains open to using WalletConnect Pay beyond events, including online and retail contexts, if in-person UX becomes more intuitive. The next benchmark is whether crypto checkout can become expected infrastructure, not an event novelty, for merchants seeking reliable checkout optionality at scale now.
