Cash App Users Can Now Receive Bitcoin Via The Lightning Network
- Mobile payments firm operated by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s Block Inc., Cash App will now allow its 40 million customers to accept payments in Bitcoin via Lightning Network.
- The product lead of the firm, Michael Rihani, confirmed that the new feature will only be accessible to Cash App users in the US except those in the New York state.
- The firm announced several free features for its customers like conversion of paycheck into Bitcoin and rounding off debit and credit card payments into BTC earlier this year.
Cash App, a mobile payment service available in the United States and the United Kingdom, has announced that it will now allow its 40 million users to accept payments in Bitcoin (BTC) via the Lightning Network, as per a Twitter post from the product lead at the firm, Michael Rihani.
Lightning Network is a layer which is built atop the Bitcoin blockchain and is made to make the world’s biggest crypto network more scalable as initially, the BTC network was not designed to be scalable but was more focused on sending money privately without the involvement of centralized entities and also, to act as a Store of Value and a deflationary asset.
Currently, the Bitcoin network only handles 5-7 transactions per second which is nearly not enough to support a large user base. As a result, the Lightning Network was create to make the network more scalable and process a higher number of transactions. As per a Bitpay blog, the Lightning Network claims to process close to 1 million transaction per second, which is even higher than VISA, which processes tens of thousands of transactions each second.
As per Rihani, the new feature can be accessed from the “Money Tab” and then select Bitcoin. After the users follow this move, they will see a QR code or a link being created which can then be leveraged to send or receive money as required by the owner of the account. It is also important to note that the QR code or the link will be different for each user.
Rihani also shared a video of how the entire process works as seen in the Twitter post below.
Rihani answered a question in the comments and stated that “Cash App now supports both send and receive over lightning. As long as the other wallet supports LN, you should be good.” He also stated that the new feature will work on both iOS and Android.
Cash App integration with the Lightning Network was first announced in Feb this year wherein the users of the platform were able to send payments via the Network to other LN wallets while only now, the feature to receive their tokens in Cash App has been introduced.
However, the product lead of the firm confirmed that the new feature will only be accessible to Cash App users in the US except those in the New York state.
The payments firm also announced in April this year the debut several free features for its customers including the seamless conversion of paycheck into Bitcoin and rounding off debit and credit card payments into BTC.
A crypto journalist with over 3 years of experience in DeFi, NFT, metaverse, etc. Parth has worked with major media outlets in the crypto and finance world and has gained experience and expertise in crypto culture after surviving bear and bull markets over the years.
