Strike Brings Lightning-Based Remittance Payments to Africa

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Bit­coin pay­ments plat­form Strike has now expand­ed to Africa, enabling instant and low-cost remit­tances to the con­ti­nent by lever­ag­ing its new “Send Glob­al­ly” feature.

The tool, avail­able to all Amer­i­can Strike users, will offer ini­tial cov­er­age to Nige­ria, Kenya, and Ghana. 

Bringing Bitcoin to Africa

As announced by Strike on Tues­day, the fea­ture was launched in part­ner­ship with the African Bit­coin com­pa­ny Bit­nob. With­in the app, U.S.-based Strike users can imme­di­ate­ly send mon­ey to an African recip­i­ent, where the funds will be con­vert­ed into their rel­e­vant local cur­ren­cy and deposit­ed into their bank, mobile mon­ey, or Bit­nob account. 

Strike claims this fea­ture will improve the ease of pay­ments in Africa, where bank­ing ser­vices are extreme­ly lim­it­ed and cross-bor­der pay­ment options are few and far between. Strike CEO Jack Mallers specif­i­cal­ly point­ed to the high fees and ser­vice halts from incum­bent pay­ment providers as a pri­ma­ry benefit. 

“High fees, slow set­tle­ment, and lack of inno­va­tion in cross-bor­der pay­ments have neg­a­tive­ly impact­ed the devel­op­ing world,” said Mallers. “Strike offers an oppor­tu­ni­ty for peo­ple to trans­fer their US dol­lars eas­i­ly and instant­ly across borders.”

Bit­nob CEO Bernard Parah added that the appli­ca­tion will help finan­cial insti­tu­tions source USD liq­uid­i­ty more eas­i­ly. “The cur­rent finan­cial sys­tem isn’t set up in a way that ensures equal access for peo­ple and insti­tu­tions from Africa,” he said.

Africa is known for being a world leader in Bit­coin and cryp­to adop­tion giv­en the lim­i­ta­tions of the lega­cy finan­cial sys­tem across the con­ti­nent. A KuCoin study released in April found that cryp­to had already reached 35% adop­tion in Nige­ria, with over 17 mil­lion peo­ple hav­ing placed over half of their wealth in the asset class. 

In June, a col­lec­tion of human rights activists includ­ing Yeon­mi Park peti­tioned con­gress on the impor­tance of Bit­coin and cryp­to with­in the under­de­vel­oped world. These coun­tries, it argued, face issues like mon­e­tary colo­nial­ism, bank freezes, and exploita­tive remit­tance fees. 

One of the letter’s sig­na­to­ries – Alex Glad­stein –  pro­mot­ed Bit­coin again on Tues­day after the Cen­tral Bank of Africa announced that cash with­drawals at ATMs would be fur­ther reduced to just ₦20,000 per day in Jan­u­ary 2023 – the equiv­a­lent of $45.00 USD. 

Strike and the Developing World

Aside from the Unit­ed States, Strike is focused on rolling out finan­cial ser­vices to mem­bers of the glob­al south that appear to need it most. These include remit­tance depen­dant nations like El Sal­vador and high­ly infla­tion­ary envi­ron­ments like Argenti­na

The com­pa­ny focus­es on uti­liz­ing the light­ning net­work – Bitcoin’s off-chain scal­ing solu­tion – to deliv­er instant glob­al pay­ments for both Bit­coin and fiat currencies. 

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