Strike, the Bitcoin crypto app, launches Send Globally: money to Africa instant and cheap

The Bitcoin crypto app Strike has officially announced that it can deliver remittances instantly and cheaply to Africa. Indeed, people in Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana can now receive low-cost instant remittances in local currency through Bitcoin’s Lightning Network.

The Strike platform offers the easiest way to send, spend, remit and invest money through digital payments. Specifically, it is an app used to buy and sell Bitcoin, tip on the Web, send and receive micropayments, send money, pay merchants for goods and services, and make payments with friends.

As already anticipated, Strike is also one of the easiest ways to buy the most prestigious crypto, Bitcoin. Simply connect a payment method to the app and then you can track the price of the coin and, why not, even buy it. 

Send Globally: Strike’s new feature, what it is and how it works 

The official declaration of Strike’s new feature, Send Globally, came just a few days ago. The new specification introduced by the app allows US users to send money to Africa instantly and cheaply.

Jack Mallers, founder and CEO of Strike, commented on the new feature: 

“With exorbitant fees to move funds in and out of Africa and incumbent providers cutting services, payment companies are struggling to operate in Africa and people can’t send money home to their family members. Strike offers people the opportunity to transfer their US dollars easily and instantly across borders.”

The remittance service allows people in Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana to receive money from the United States and convert it instantly into their local currency. The feature is made possible through a partnership between Strike and local Bitcoin app Bitnob.

Bernard Parah, founder and CEO of Bitnob, also said in a note: 

“The current financial system is not set up to ensure equal access for African people and institutions. What we have built reduces the pressure on our financial institutions to provide USD liquidity.”

Thus, through the partnership between Strike and Bitnob, citizens can now easily exchange value from the United States to people in Africa in the cheapest way possible. The biggest benefit is that sending money home to Africa can save billions of dollars in transfer fees. 

Strike and Bitnob: connecting continents via Bitcoin 

Strike and Bitnob unite the two continents by connecting local financial institutions with the Universal Lightning Network, Bitcoin’s layer 2 protocol for cheap and fast payments.

Using Lightning rails, Strike’s Send Globally feature offers users in the United States a cheaper, faster and more innovative way to instantly send payments to Africa. 

Indeed, payments are instantly converted into naira, cedi or shillings and deposited directly into the recipient’s bank, mobile money or Bitnob account. In addition, Strike said it plans to enable Send Globally in more African countries in the future.

Lightning Network: the solution to Bitcoin’s scalability problems 

As anticipated, to enable the new feature, Strike will use Bitcoin’s Lightning Network. But what is this solution proposed for the Bitcoin crypto? 

According to experts, it is probably the ultimate solution to the scalability problems of the famous cryptocurrency. Specifically, Lightning Network is Bitcoin’s layer-2 solution, in other words, a network created on the structure of an existing blockchain, known as layer-1.

For example, Ethereum is a layer-1 on which several second layers are built, including Optimism and Arbitrum. These structures serve to enhance the existing chain, and among the main goals is to increase scalability and speed of transactions. 

Lightning Network is an off-chain solution and involves a peer-to-peer protocol. In fact, transactions do not travel on the blockchain, but through a private channel between users. Thus, its operation is quite simple: participants open the channel, upload funds, exchange as many times as they wish the crypto, and then they can close the channel. 

The innovation is that the opening and closing of the channel takes place on-chain. Whereas the peer-to-peer transactions remain on the channel and are not shared with the Bitcoin blockchain. This mechanism allows participants’ balances to be correct at all times, but avoids interacting with the chain for every single transaction.