McDonald’s, Starbucks and Walmart will soon begin accepting Bitcoin as a form of payment via the Lightning Network.
While Apple Pay has long been a payment option at some of these franchises, paying by Bitcoin will be a new addition.
This will be possible because Shopify, NCR and Blackhawk – e-commerce platforms that these brands work with – have signed a deal with Strike wallet, a crypto payment app that serves as a bridge between customers and retailers.
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The million-dollar question: what is the Lightning Network?
Ordinarily, Bitcoin relies on its own blockchain to process transactions and the main issue is the average BTC transaction takes about 10 minutes to complete, which is obviously way too slow if you wanna use it instead of a credit/debit card.
However, the Lightning Network overrides the need for on-chain confirmations by using smart contracts, which are basically blockchain-guaranteed automated contracts that run when predetermined conditions are met.
It can also support up to a billion transactions per second, with extremely low fees (fractions of a cent) and transaction times measured in milliseconds or, worst-case scenario, seconds.
“If we can help make the Bitcoin network more accessible and usable we believe we can change the world,” Strike CEO Jack Mallers said, according to CoinDesk.
