Bitcoin fintech giant Stryk has launched its Lightning Network money transfer service Send Globally in the Philippines, a $35 billion remittance market.
Send launched globally in the Southeast Asian country on January 31, 2023, helping businesses and tourists receive international money transfers in Philippine pesos. The country receives $35 billion in remittances globally.
How Strike’s Global Service Works
“Remittance is a broken system and Strike provides an incredibly empowering experience for people to send money around the world in almost an instant,” said Jack Mollers, CEO of Strike.
According to a press release, Strike’s remittance service converts a sender’s fiat to bitcoin and sends the bitcoin using the Lightning Network to a Strike partner in the destination country, which in the case of the Philippines is Pouch.ph. Pouch.ph then converts the bitcoin into the recipient’s fiat currency and credits their bank or mobile money account, with Strike protecting both parties from the tax implications of handling bitcoin directly.
Bitcoin’s Lightning Network is a layer-two solution on the bitcoin blockchain that allows micropayments between nodes on a payment channel. Unlike traditional payment networks, Lightning’s low fees enable near-zero-cost remittances.
Most recently, Mallers announced a trial to bring bitcoin Lightning Network payments to retailers through a partnership with Fiserv’s point-of-sale solution Clover Commerce. The trial allows any app with Lightning capability to pay in bitcoin for goods and services at Clover merchants.
Philippine smartphone and internet adoption bodes well for the strike
Send globally for Strike users in Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya on December 6, 2022, where it has reportedly gained rapid traction.
However, mainstream adoption in the Philippines will rely heavily on network effects driven by smartphone and internet penetration.
According to Statista, the number of smartphone users will increase from 85 million in 2022 to 87 million by 2023. Additionally, forecasts suggest that smartphone users will increase to 91.5 million in 2025, representing approximately 83% of the island nation’s population.
Additionally, Statista predicts that by the end of 2023, approximately three-quarters of the population will have Internet access. The strike’s success is more likely with increasing internet penetration, as it helped drive the adoption of the crypto game Axi Infinity.
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