Strike Announces Shopify Integration, Partnerships With NCR And Blackhawk Bringing Bitcoin Lighting Payments To Major Merchants

Strike, a digital payments platform built on Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, today announced an integration with e-commerce company Shopify. Now eligible U.S. Shopify merchants will be able to receive bitcoin payments from customers globally as U.S. dollars, announced Strike CEO Jack Mallers speaking at the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami.

A Forbes Under 30 alum, Mallers has also noted that Chicago-based Strike partnered with Blockchain 50 lister NCR
NCR
, the world’s largest point-of-sale (POS) supplier, and payments firm Blackhawk.

The integration offers an alternative to traditional card networks such as Visa
V
and MasterCard by leveraging the Lightning Network, a second layer built on top of the bitcoin blockchain that allows users to send or receive cryptocurrency quickly and cheaply by moving transactions off of the main blockchain. The service will be accessible to any consumer in the world with a Lightning Network-enabled wallet, including more than 70 million CashApp users, Mallers said.

The announcement underscores the growing adoption of the Lightning Network. Earlier in the day, Robinhood unveiled plans to integrate the solution into its technology stack, joining firms like cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, Twitter and Block.

On Tuesday, the California-based developer of the Lightning Network, Lightning Labs, introduced a new protocol that, it hopes, will open Lightning Network to assets other than bitcoin, including stablecoins and fiat currencies.