Bitpay now allows bitcoin payments via Lightning Network (LN). This is to enable bitcoin users to pay using the second layer network of the crypto asset. Bitpay previously accepted bitcoin ( BTC) via the onchain. This was in addition to bitcoin cash, ethereum and wrapped bitcoin. Bitpay claims that merchants and users can now use the LN payment rail to access wallets such as Cashapp or Strike.
The company announced Wednesday that consumers now have a low-cost option when paying with Bitcoin at Bitpay-enabled merchants. According to the announcement, merchants do not need to make any changes to accept LN payments. The Atlanta-based crypto payments firm explained that customers will only need to select from more than 100 LN-enabled wallets.
Tony Gallippi (Bitpay co-founder), stated in a statement that ‘Bitpay’s integration with Lightning Network gives customers more choices and merchants more options to be paid using blockchain technology. Bitpay announced that Pacsun, a youth-focused retailer of clothing, will become the first merchant to accept LN payments through the integration.
On October 5, 2021, Pacsun announced that it would accept 11 cryptocurrency assets via Bitpay. Pacsun stated that it was seeing a growing demand for cryptocurrency payments and had made the announcement on October 5, 2021. Mike Relich, Pacsun’s co-CEO, stated that Pacsun was excited to become one of the first Bitpay Partners to accept bitcoin payments via the Lightning Network. Relich added:
Lightning Network [support] offers our customers instant payments and extremely low network fees. It also gives Pacsun more opportunities for bitcoin holders to shop online at Pacsun.
The Lightning Network, a layer 2 (L2) payment protocol, was created by Joseph Poon in February 2015 by Thaddeus dryja. There are both advantages and disadvantages to the L2 network. Some of its benefits include privacy, granularity enhancement and speed. The L2 routing network’s total value locked (TVL), at the time of writing is approximately $164.6 Million or 3,700 .