Strike and Bitnob partnership brings Bitcoin Lightning Network payments to Africa

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(Kitco News) – As the cryptocurrency ecosystem continues to navigate one of the worst bear market stretches in its history, the African continent remains one of the best avenues for adoption and practical use as blockchain offers the promise of creating a widely accessible banking and payment infrastructure .

Strike – a digital payments platform built on Bitcoin’s Lightning Network – is the latest company to capitalize on the promise of Africa with the launch of its “Send Globally” feature, enabling instant, affordable payments to Africa.

The Lightning Network is a layer 2 payment protocol built on top of Bitcoin that enables faster and cheaper transactions between participating nodes through the use of off-chain transactions.

To help facilitate the launch of Send Globally, Strike partnered with African payments platform Bitnob to enable instant payments to Africa. The platform, which officially went live on Tuesday, allows Strike users to send money to Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya instantly without transaction fees.

Funds sent are automatically converted to the local currency and deposited directly into the recipient’s bank, mobile money or Bitnob account. The service is particularly useful in countries that have few options for cross-border money transfers.

“High fees, slow settlements and a lack of innovation in cross-border payments have negatively impacted developing countries,” said Jack Mallers, founder and CEO of Strike. “With exorbitant fees to transfer funds in and out of Africa and established providers ceasing services, payment companies are struggling to operate in Africa and people are unable to send money home to their family members. Strike offers an opportunity for people to transfer US dollars easily and immediately across national borders.”

One of the main aims of the new service is to help increase access to affordable banking services in a continent that has historically been excluded from the global financial system.

“The current financial system is not set up in a way that ensures equal access for people and institutions from Africa,” said Bernard Parah, founder and CEO of Bitnob. “What we’ve built reduces the pressure on our financial institutions to raise USD liquidity. People can now easily exchange value from the US to people in Africa in the cheapest way. We can now save people sending money back home to Africa billions of USD in transfer fees.”

Going forward, Strike intends to continue its expansion into Africa by developing further partnerships, including a collaboration with Chipper Cash, one of Africa’s largest peer-to-peer and cross-border payment service providers.

According to data from Chainalysis, Africa is one of the fastest growing crypto markets in the world, but remains the smallest active market, with crypto transactions peaking at $20 billion per month by mid-2021.

As a result of the rapid growth, the IMF has called for increased regulation of the region’s crypto market, citing the possibility of cryptocurrencies being “used to transfer funds illegally out of the region and to circumvent local rules to prevent capital outflows. ” The IMF also warned that “widespread use of crypto could undermine the effectiveness of monetary policy, creating risks to financial and macroeconomic stability.”