- Strike yesterday announced a trio of partnerships, including ecommerce giant Shopify
- Strike users can now pay for items in a huge range of physical storefronts as well as online
- The announcements increase the integration of the Lightning Network
Digital payments platform Strike yesterday announced several high profile partnerships that expand the company’s reach and further embed Bitcoin’s Lightning Network into mainstream use. Strike CEO Jack Mallers told the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami on Thursday that the company has signed deals with point-of-sale giant NCR, alternative payments processor Blackhawk, and ecommerce giant Shopify in order to facilitate in-store use of Bitcoin, saying that Strike can help “change the world” by returning Bitcoin to its roots as digital cash.
Online and In-store Shopping With Bitcoin
Strike has already met with considerable success in the last 12 months, with its infrastructure used to underpin El Salvador’s Chivo wallet network, while Mallers recently told Peter McCormack that the company aims to launch in 50-100 countries this year.
Mallers told the Bitcoin Miami crowd that the trio of deals mean that Americans would soon be able to walk into millions of storefronts and pay for goods with bitcoin through the Lightning Network, adding that it was his intention to “make the Bitcoin network more accessible and usable”.
Strike-Shopify Deal Opens Up Lightning Network to Millions
The press release that accompanied the Shopify deal noted that the 1.75 million merchants in the Shopify network could now accept bitcoin payments as U.S. dollars through Strike, allowing merchants to “diversify their existing payment options and reach untapped global markets and purchasing power”.
Strike’s partnerships come just a day after BitPay announced that it was integrating Lightning Network payments into its platform, marking a great week for the Bitcoin scaling solution.
