Amboss, Coinbase Driving Bitcoin’s Lightning Fast Layer 2 Payments

Mer­chants could soon be pay­ing an extra $502 mil­lion annu­al­ly in pay­ment pro­cess­ing costs accord­ing to a recent arti­cle by The Wall Street Jour­nal. The report­ing pre­dicts that mer­chants will pass along at least some of those costs to con­sumers, an unfor­tu­nate devel­op­ment in the face of ris­ing infla­tion.

The WSJ arti­cle also men­tioned that more small busi­ness­es are begin­ning to offer dis­counts to shop­pers who pay by deb­it card, cash, or check. Amboss, a bit­coin Light­ning Net­work ser­vice provider is work­ing to add bit­coin to that list.

“Busi­ness own­ers are only just begin­ning to under­stand the poten­tial for Bit­coin’s Light­ning Net­work, with Light­ning reduc­ing fees by 99%,” Amboss co-founder and CEO Jesse Shrad­er offered in a dis­cus­sion about their developments.

The Light­ning Net­work is a sec­ond lay­er built on top of bit­coin that facil­i­tates instant and cheap pay­ments. Accord­ing to Amboss data, the aver­age light­ning fee is .003%. This stands in stark con­trast to the 1.5% to 3.5% fees cred­it card com­pa­nies typ­i­cal­ly charge, accord­ing to data from Bankrate.

Amboss just announced the release of a new prod­uct called Hydro. Hydro will auto­mate liq­uid­i­ty on the Light­ning Net­work, mak­ing it eas­i­er for busi­ness­es to set up and man­age Light­ning pay­ment infra­struc­ture. By elim­i­nat­ing the need for cred­it, Shrad­er is con­fi­dent the fee sav­ings will incen­tivize greater accep­tance of bit­coin as a medi­um of exchange.

“Light­ning helps accel­er­ate the move­ment of bit­coin to a speed that’s more appro­pri­ate for dai­ly use,” Shrad­er con­clud­ed in our inter­view. Shrad­er is opti­mistic that through mak­ing Light­ning eas­i­er, more busi­ness­es will be will­ing to accept those pay­ments as a strat­e­gy to cut costs.

Oth­er com­pa­nies have expressed recent inter­est in the Light­ning Net­work as well. Coin­base CEO Bri­an Arm­strong post­ed this week about plans to inte­grate light­ning into their platform.

Promi­nent bit­coin advo­cates like Jack Dorsey have been crit­i­cal of Coinbase’s reluc­tance to do so, but it seems the pres­sure has final­ly paid off. Bit­coin bull and Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood not­ed in a recent post that Coinbase’s inte­gra­tion with light­ing will give access to 100 mil­lion users. A sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ment that may help bol­ster the tra­jec­to­ry of Light­ing adop­tion across the globe.