Strike announces Bitcoin Lightning Network’s adoption by Shopify, NCR & Blackhawk Payments

Today, on April 7, 2022 the number one DTC retail platform, Shopify and the largest point-of-sale (POS) provider, NCR announced their adoption of Bitcoin’s Lightning Network to accept in-store and online payments. The announcement underscores the growing adoption of the Lightning Network with previous integrations by Cash App (Block), Square (Block), Robinhood, Kraken, Twitter along with an endorsement of El Salvador to its citizens.

Key terms to understand for this Strike announcement:

Strike — provides four key functions:

• Facilitates sending and receiving money instantly for free regardless of currency via the Lightning Network.
• Connects your business to a global, instant payment network.
• Facilitates buying bitcoin.
• Facilitates payroll check deposit in USD or bitcoin.

Lightning Network — The lightning network is a second layer technology applied to bitcoin that makes transactions faster, less costly, and more quickly confirmed than those conducted directly on the bitcoin blockchain

Bitcoin Rails — Is a transmission protocol or “rails” in this case provided by the Lightning Network to facilitate peer-to-peer payments, remittance or consumer payments in the form of swipes, dips, scans or taps at a merchant terminal beginning the authorization process in any currency. The initiating currency (likely USD for the purpose of this example) is immediately converted to Bitcoin [BTC] to move the money (on Bitcoin Rails) and instantly converted back to whatever currency the receiver wishes to receive.

The announcement comes via a partnership with Jack Mallers’ Strike payment platform to facilitate payments into the Lightning Network. Mallers, named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 in 2017 says via the Strike press release,

“With the Strike integration, Shopify merchants can accept payments globally and save costs on processing fees, with cash-final settlement. Strike’s integration enables Shopify merchants to diversify their existing payment options and reach untapped global markets and purchasing power.”

In an inflationary world where buyer’s and retailer’s will be looking to save anywhere they can, we should see quick utilization of the Lightning Network. This may be the tipping point that causes real utilization of Bitcoin as a form of payment.

The Lightning Network, a second layer built on top of the bitcoin blockchain enables users to send or receive currency quickly and inexpensively by moving transactions off of the main blockchain making for quicker cheaper payments. Mallers said that the service will be accessible to anybody with a Lightning Network-enabled wallet. This includes more than 70 million CashApp (Block/Square) customers regardless of whether they hold Bitcoin or not.

Receive $5 when you sign up for your free Strike account here allowing you to send money for free to anyone else in the world in any currency in the world.

See why users don’t need Bitcoin to benefit from payments being made thru the Lightning Network and “Bitcoin Rails”.

Here are the highlights why the NCR and Shopify integrations to Bitcoin Rails are so large:

NCR Point-of-Sale provider highlights

• NCR has over 34,000 employees in 160 countries and solutions distributed in 141 countries.
• NCR POS solutions, including hardware and software, are used by over 100,000 restaurants of all shapes and sizes.
• 22 of the top 30 convenience retailers in North America depend on NCR POS hardware and software.
• More than 7,000 department and specialty retail customers across the world rely on NCR POS systems to run their business.

Shopify e-commerce platform provider highlights

• Shopify is used in about 175 countries
• more than 800,000 stores powered by Shopify
• Shopify made over $1.5 billion in sales during Black Friday in 2021
• Shopify facilitates 10,978 orders per minute