On March 2, Xapo Bank announced its partnership with Lightspark, a company run by David Marcus, Facebook’s former head of crypto. The partnership aims to expand the utility of bitcoin and the Lightning Network. Xapo revealed Thursday that it is the first fully licensed private bank to offer payments over the Lightning Network.
Xapo CEO sees Lightning Network integration as a solution to high fees and long transaction times
xapo has associated with spark of light to integrate the Lightning Network, according to an announcement sent to Bitcoin.com News. The company, founded in 2013, explained that its customers can now pay for small purchases of up to $100 at any provider that accepts Lightning Network payments. In addition, Xapo offers interest-bearing US dollar bank accounts, with plans to soon offer the same for bitcoin. Xapo CEO Seamus Rocca believes that using the Lightning Network can help customers avoid long wait times and higher on-chain fees.
“The average transaction confirmation time of one hour combined with potentially high fees during periods of high usage make the Bitcoin network unsuitable for small daily payments like groceries,” Rocca said in a statement. “By integrating with the hyper-efficient Lightning Network, we are the first bank in the world to streamline this process and allow our members to pay for small purchases with bitcoin without having to convert to USD first.”
At the same time, Jack Dorsey’s payments firm Block launched a new Lightning Network service provider called “c=.” The c=venture notes on the website that it is partnering with Lightning wallets, businesses, and nodes. During the Xapo-Lightspark announcement, Rocca said that “against a backdrop of hyperinflation, economic uncertainty, and political turmoil,” demand for bitcoin payment integrations continues to grow. “We need integrations like this that open up access to bitcoin payments,” insisted the Xapo CEO.
To use the Lightning Network through Xapo, customers must have Bitcoin (BTC) in your Xapo Bank App. Users can then scan a Lightning Network invoice and pay any merchant with the app. Xapo detailed that the network will charge a small amount of satoshis for the transaction. David Marcus, CEO and co-founder of Lightspark, explained that Xapo has been one of the company’s closed beta partners.
“We are delighted that they have chosen Lightspark’s enterprise-grade solution to reliably send and receive payments on the Lightning Network without all the complexity and operational overhead that typically comes with running a node on it,” said Marcus. At the time of writing, the Lightning Network has a total capacity of 5,421.53 BTC.
What do you think about Xapo Bank’s Lightning Network integration? Let us know what you think about this topic in the comments section below.
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