Scalability
Large numbers of cashless payment transactions, such as online and mobile payments, are occurring every day.
Transactions on the blockchain are not instant and must be verified by the network, which takes a certain amount of time. When many transactions are done at the same time, this verification process might result in payments to take a long time until completion and transaction fees may also increase. As a result, blockchain-based payments may be perceived to be slower and less convenient than traditional payment methods.
However, for blockchain-based payment services to spread within the public, we believe that it is necessary to achieve payment processing capabilities equal to or greater than those of existing payment methods.
Blockchain technology has long been expected to solve various problems of existing payment methods and should have become an effective solution for next-generation payment systems. However, at the time of writing, the impact on existing payment methods is still limited and widely used practical services have yet to take root.
We believe that one of the reasons for this is that many blockchains used in payment-related applications are inefficiently designed and, therefore, inferior in processing power in comparison to existing payment methods, such as credit card and mobile payment systems.
A typical mobile payment system processes hundreds to a few thousand transactions per second (=TPS). The systems of the world’s largest credit card companies can process an average of a few thousand (4,000-6,000) to a maximum of 50,000 TPS.
On the other hand, the processing capacity of general blockchains is about several to several dozen TPS. With the rather limited TPS of Bitcoin and Ethereum, significantly higher fees and longer payment completion times can be expected due to network congestion as the number of users and applications built on top of it will grow.
Some of the more recent blockchains take advantage of high processing capacity and low fees. But when transactions are concentrated in time, processing capacity drops significantly and the networks tend to become unstable, making them unsuitable for payment applications with a large number of transactions.
In order to enable blockchain technology as a viable payment method, UPCX achieves comparable performance to traditional payment methods by utilizing various consensus mechanisms and protocols that enable faster and more efficient payment settlement and the processing of large numbers of transactions.