The Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami has just ended, and like a year ago, it brings with it more great news. It is delivered once again by Jack Mallers announcing that his company Strike will enable BTC payments by integrating with the largest merchant companies in the US.
CashApp expands its capabilities
Earlier this year we reported that a team under the supervision of Jack Dorsey had adapted the popular mobile payments app CashApp to the capabilities brought by the Lightning Network. This means that users of the app can make payments in Bitcoin anywhere that accepts BTC. In addition, transactions through the use of the second layer of BTC(lightning) will be cheap and fast. In order to achieve full success, it was therefore necessary to encourage merchants to use Bitcoin. This is what Jack Mallers has addressed.
The CEO of Strike announced that his company has partnered with three of the largest payment providers in the United States. We are talking about Shopify, NCR and Blackhawk Network. The goal is to enable payments using Bitcoin, in stores across the country. As Mallers points out, this type of integration eliminates banks from the payment process, which minimizes fees and provides privacy for shoppers.
“You’ll be able to walk into a grocery store, into Whole Foods, into Chipotle, if you want to use a Lightning node through Tor, you can do that. Any online retailer that uses Shopify can accept payments without a credit card network, receive payments immediately, final cash, no middlemen, no high fee.”
Additionally, Mallers while on stage used a graphic that depicted brands such as McDonald’s, Walmart, Walgreens and other well-known U.S. franchises, suggesting that Strike integration would soon be a possibility in them.
Mallers delivering the good news
At last year’s conference, Jack Mallers was the person announcing the most important news. Mallers announced that El Salvador planned to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender and will do so with Strike. Those words were soon turned into action, and Strike became the developer and provider of El Salvador’s national crypto wallet, called Chivo.
This time, Mallers engages with Bitcoin adoption within the United States and suggests that there is still much to be done. He also pointed out, the cooperation with the authorities necessary here:
“I’m working with Senator Cynthia Lummis to make sure that in the United States of America we support this open payment standard and it’s not threatened by anyone else.”
Looking at his track record and wordiness, we can assume that the newly announced goals will soon materialize.
It is worth mentioning that CashApp itself has also made new announcements. From now on, users of the app will be able to invest part of their received salary in BTC, in cryptocurrencies. In turn, Lightning Network transactions will not require confirmation, and the application will support a micropayment system.
