Payments & Point of sale use case / blog post

src/app/blog/paycode/page.mdx

@@ -0,0 +1,105 @@
+import { BlogPostLayout } from '@/components/BlogPostLayout'
+
+export const post = {
+  draft: true,
+  author: '',
+  date: '2026-03-26',
+  title: 'iroh for payments',
+  description:
+    'How Paycode used iroh to connect payment terminals to point of sale systems at highway toll booths, with no additional servers and full compliance.',
+}
+
+export const metadata = {
+    title: post.title,
+    description: post.description,
+    openGraph: {
+      title: post.title,
+      description: post.description,
+      images: [{
+        url: `/api/og?title=Blog&subtitle=${post.title}`,
+        width: 1200,
+        height: 630,
+        alt: post.title,
+        type: 'image/png',
+      }],
+      type: 'article'
+    }
+}
+
+export default (props) => <BlogPostLayout article={post} {...props} />
+
+When people think about next generation payment infrastructure, they usually
+think fancy iPads, flashy apps, Bluetooth, and paperless receipts. But the
+reality for most of the world is more humble. You’re more likely to be
+presented with Windows 7, proprietary printers, and ethernet cables.
+
+In this blog post, we highlight PayCode, a team deploying iroh in remote
+environments in Mexico. Their most recent project involved connecting payment
+terminals and point of sale systems to bring tap-to-pay technology to highway
+toll booths. They needed a way for highway toll software to talk directly to the
+point of sale devices, so the cashier can create a charge, pass the device to
+the user in the car/truck, and receive the payment.
+
+Their work offers a compelling look at what it takes to modernize legacy systems
+to reduce cloud costs and improve connectivity & reliability, without replacing
+old hardware.
+Why peer to peer payments?
+
+Paying for things can be frustrating if technology breaks. Slow or inoperable
+point of sale systems can cause massive delays, lines, and ultimately lost
+revenue. Connectivity at all times isn’t always guaranteed, especially for
+mobile devices that move out of range of access points or move in and out of
+cellular dead zones, or if the cloud service is down. Every second saved at the
+point of sale people can get on with their lives instead of waiting for the
+loading spinner.  There are many ways to solve connectivity issues, including
+adding a server to the local WiFi network that brokers data flow between
+devices, using a classic HTTP server or MQTT.
+
+However, this server/broker-based approach can be expensive to maintain in the
+long term, by requiring more on-site hardware as well as on-the-ground
+technicians to service that hardware. Additionally, the original problem never
+fully goes away: the central point of failure just shifts from the cloud to the
+local server. In contrast, with peer-to-peer connectivity, no server is needed.
+The payment terminal syncs encrypted payloads directly between the point of sale
+device and payment devices directly.  One of the most critical requirements for
+PCI-compliant payment systems is that the raw payment data can never flow
+through anything other than the official compliant software. In this way,
+peer-to-peer connections can act as a blind command and control channel between
+devices; the raw payment data remains on the payment terminal, and any resulting
+transaction data is encrypted into a secure payload before being sent off the
+payment device to other non-compliant devices. This separation ensures that even
+as connectivity improves, compliance and security boundaries remain intact.
+
+### Legacy Hardware, Modern Protocols
+
+PayCode is one example of a digital transformation company that chooses iroh to implement peer-to-peer connectivity between devices in the field — payment terminals, point of sale systems, and highway toll software. Existing constraints on hardware and budget made server-based options impossible, so a peer-to-peer approach was the only way forward. The environment itself is far from modern:
+- Touch-based Windows 7 machines
+- Dual-core Intel CPUs with up to 8GB of RAM
+- A mix of Ethernet (on terminals) and Wi-Fi (across the tollway system)
+
+Despite these constraints, the team successfully integrated iroh by bundling the rust library inside a .NET 6 SDK.
+
+Quote box> “iroh was super easy to use… I started hacking and was able to integrate it into our Kotlin PoS app and have a published .NET NuGet package for our client to use in that month.”
+
+### How it works
+
+A terminal scans the QR code, registers the remote node as a static provider, and establishes a connection through gossip-based discovery.
+
+Each QR code encodes an “iroh ticket,” which contains the endpoint information needed to connect to a remote node. A terminal scans the QR code, registers the remote node as a static provider, and establishes a connection through gossip-based discovery.
+
+The terminal is then able to receive commands and send information back through the gossip channel. One such command is the start transaction request: the terminal receives the data required to charge the user, executes the transaction within the PCI-compliant flow, and then sends the outcome back through the channel.
+
+Because the communication is direct between devices, transactions avoid unnecessary intermediaries, which reduces latency and makes the process highly reliable. At the same time since all data is end-to-end encrypted we ensure that even the most sensitive data remains protected throughout the entire transaction lifecycle.
+
+### Final thoughts
+
+This deployment highlights something important: innovation doesn’t always happen
+in greenfield environments. In many cases, the most impactful innovation happens
+when you can modernize legacy systems to reduce cloud costs and improve
+connectivity & reliability, without replacing old hardware. This is why it's so
+important to have tools like iroh that can work on any device, and why we built
+iroh to be flexible enough to meet the needs of a wide range of use cases, from
+cutting-edge applications to legacy modernization projects like this one. We’re
+excited to see what other creative solutions teams will build with iroh in the
+future!
+

src/app/page.jsx

@@ -136,6 +136,17 @@ export default function Page() {
                   </div>
                 </div>
               </Link>
+              <Link href="/solutions/pos" className="block">
+                <div className="grid md:grid-cols-3 gap-6 items-center p-6 border border-irohGray-300 dark:border-irohGray-700 rounded-lg hover:border-irohPurple-500 transition-colors">
+                  <div className="md:col-span-2">
+                    <p className="text-xl font-medium text-irohGray-800 dark:text-irohGray-100 mb-2">Point of Sale Payments</p>
+                    <p className="text-irohGray-600 dark:text-irohGray-300">Connect payment terminals directly to point of sale systems over Bluetooth, LAN, or Wi-Fi with full PCI compliance and no additional servers.</p>
+                  </div>
+                  <div className="flex items-center justify-center">
+                    <img src="/img/user-logos/paycode.svg" alt="Paycode logo" className="object-contain max-h-16" />
+                  </div>
+                </div>
+              </Link>
             </div>
           </section>
 

src/app/solutions/page.jsx

@@ -34,6 +34,15 @@ const solutions = [
     href: "/solutions/delta-chat",
     logo: "delta_chat",
   },
+  {
+    category: "Payments / Point of Sale",
+    company: "Payments",
+    headline: "PCI-Compliant Peer-to-Peer Payments",
+    description: "Connect payment terminals directly to point of sale systems with no additional servers and full PCI compliance.",
+    href: "/solutions/pos",
+    logo: "paycode",
+    logoExt: "svg",
+  },
 ]
 
 export default function SolutionsPage() {
@@ -72,14 +81,18 @@ export default function SolutionsPage() {
                     </p>
                   </div>
                   <div className="flex items-center justify-center p-8">
-                    <ThemeImage
-                      alt={`${solution.company} logo`}
-                      darkSrc={`/img/user-logos/${solution.logo}.png`}
-                      lightSrc={`/img/user-logos/${solution.logo}.png`}
-                      width={300}
-                      height={150}
-                      className="object-contain max-h-32"
-                    />
+                    {solution.logo ? (
+                      <ThemeImage
+                        alt={`${solution.company} logo`}
+                        darkSrc={`/img/user-logos/${solution.logo}.${solution.logoExt || 'png'}`}
+                        lightSrc={`/img/user-logos/${solution.logo}.${solution.logoExt || 'png'}`}
+                        width={300}
+                        height={150}
+                        className="object-contain max-h-32"
+                      />
+                    ) : (
+                      <p className="text-4xl font-bold text-irohGray-300 dark:text-irohGray-600">{solution.company}</p>
+                    )}
                   </div>
                 </div>
               </Link>