Day-old Pizza & Bitcoin Payments.
You know how pizza can sometimes taste even better a day later, and at room temperature?
Sure, it doesn't look appetizing, but once you get into it...
Oooft!
This news is just like that: a few days old, a little bland on the surface, but truly delicious once you bite into it.
Strike payments now allows businesses to transact on the Bitcoin Lightning Network, in US dollars.
All you need to know about the Lightning Network in this context, is:
It's fast (like, almost instant)
And it's cheap (about $0.04 per transaction, no matter the amount).
"Ok...so it's fast, and you can save a bit on transaction fees. Who cares?" - most people.
Fair point! But to answer the question:
Big businesses care.
Why? Because every year, they pay a metric sh*t ton in transaction fees to the likes of Visa, Mastercard, and American Express.
In fact, in 2021 alone, US merchants paid - wait for it - $137B in transaction fees.
That's a big number!
But it really hits home when you compare each system on a per-transaction basis, using the lowest card fees available (Mastercard's 1.15% + $0.05 rate):
$10 transaction
Card (1.15% + $0.05) = $0.165 fee
BTC Lightning (+ $0.04) = $0.04 fee
$100 transaction
Card (1.15% + $0.05) = $1.20 fee
BTC Lightning (+ $0.04) = $0.04 fee
$1000 transaction
Card (1.15% + $0.05) = $11.55 fee
BTC Lightning (+ $0.04) = $0.04 fee
You see how card fees scale with the purchase amount, while BTC Lightning fees stay flat?
It's beautiful, no?
Ok but, the lightning network has been around for a while, and Strike has offered point-of-sale integrations for a minute now...
So if businesses were going to adopt this technology, wouldn't they have started to do so already?
Well, up until now, there was one BIG problem:
USD transactions weren't supported via Strike's Lightning Network integration - Bitcoin was the only option.
And for the likes of Walmart and Amazon, Bitcoin's volatility is a major turn off.
But now that they can transact in a stable currency, whilst saving tens of millions of dollars in fees per year in fees - our guess is:
The Bitcoin Lightning Network is about to be everywhere.
