Key takeaways:
- Strike, a Bitcoin digital wallet built on the Lightning Network, has announced integration with Shopify, NCR, and Blackhawk Network
- The integration will allow thousands of retailers to accept Bitcoin from customers and convert it to fiat with minimum delay and no conversion fees
- Lighting Network is a Layer 2 scaling solution for Bitcoin, capable of processing transactions at a fraction of the cost of its parent network
Strike partners with leading payment processors to bring zero-fee BTC payments to thousands of stores
Speaking at the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami, Zap CEO Jack Mallers revealed that the company’s Lightning Network wallet, Strike, has partnered with leading global payment processors, including Shopify, NCR, and Blackhawk Network.
Thanks to the newly-penned partnerships, over 400,000 stores will now be able to process Bitcoin payments via the Lightning Network, with no fees or delays when converting Bitcoin to fiat, according to Maller. The list of supported retailers is truly stunning. If everything goes according to plan, companies like McDonald’s, Walmart, Home Depot, Best Buy, and many others will soon be able to receive Lightning Network-enabled payments from their customers.
Maller’s announcement has received a wave of approval on social media, with some of crypto’s most prominent voices highlighting the magnitude of Strike’s new partnerships. Former Twitter CEO and a staunch BTC supported Jack Dorsey sent his support to Maller, while Anthony Pompliano, a prominent Bitcoin analytic with over 1.5 million Twitter followers wrote,
Lighting Network is Bitcoin’s Layer 2 scaling solution that uses a complex system of smart contracts to offload some of the computational burden off of the main chain and allows Bitcoin transactions to be settled almost instantly, with minimum fees.
In related news, one of the leading Bitcoin developers, Lightning Labs, announced earlier this week that it is working on Taro, a new Lighting Network-focused protocol for issuing digital assets on the Bitcoin chain. Once fully developed, Taro will make it possible for digital assets like stablecoins to make use of the world’s largest decentralized monetary network.
Recent announcements will play an important role in shifting the narrative of Bitcoin being primarily a store of value, a digital alternative to gold, to Bitcoin being a medium of exchange capable of rivaling fiat and established centralized payment networks such as Visa and Mastercard.
