On March 2, Xapo Bank declared its collaboration with LightsparkA firm owned and managed by David MarcusFormer crypto leader at Facebook. The Alliance has the goal of increasing the usability of Bitcoin and the Lightning Network. Xapo distributed an announcement on Thursday that it is the first certified private bank to provide payment through the Lightning Network on the web.
Xapo CEO Sees Lightning Network Integration as a Solution To High Fees and Long Transaction Times
Xapo has teamed up with Lightspark to integrate the Lightning Network, as reported by Bitcoin.com News. Established in 2013, the company stated that customers can now purchase items up to $100 at any vendor that accepts Lightning Network payments. In addition, Xapo is offering U.S. dollar interest-bearing bank accounts and plans to soon offer the same service for bitcoin. Xapo CEO Seamus Rocca believes that by utilizing the Lightning Network, customers can avoid long waiting periods and higher onchain costs.
“The long transaction confirmation time of one hour combined with potentially large fees during times of high usage make the Bitcoin network unfit for small daily payments such as groceries,” Rocca noted. “By integrating with the ultra-efficient Lightning Network, we are the first bank in the world to make this process easier and allow our customers to pay for small purchases with bitcoin without having to first convert it to USD.”
At the same time, Jack Dorsey’s payments firm, Block, launched a new initiative called “c=”, a Lightning Network service provider. The website c= venture reveals that it collaborates with businesses, wallets, and Lightning nodes. During the Xapo-Lightspark announcement, Rocca stated that this is the consequence “against a backdrop of hyperinflation, economic uncertainty, and political turmoil,” and the demand for bitcoin payment integrations continues to grow. “We need integrations like this that open up access to bitcoin payments,” the Xapo CEO insists.
To use the Lightning Network via Xapo, customers must have bitcoin (BTC), as required by law. The customer then can open the Xapo Bank App and scan an image to view a Lightning Network invoice and pay any merchant using the app. It was explained that the transaction will be charged by the network at a low cost of satoshis. David Marcus, founder and CEO of Lightspark, revealed that Xapo has been one of the firm’s closed beta partners.
“We’re delighted that they chose Lightspark’s enterprise-grade solution to securely send and receive payments on the Lightning Network without all the complexity and operational overhead that typically comes with running a node on it,” Marcus said. At the time of writing, the Lightning Network has a total transaction capacity of 5,421.53 BTC.
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