Cryptocurrency payments platform Coingate has begun its Lightning Network trial using Litecoin. According to marketing manager Veronika Mishura, the company does up to 10% of its monthly volume via Litecoin. They believe that integrating Litecoin Lightning Network, which has over 100 nodes now, will increase the incentive to use cryptocurrency due to the reduction in fees.
Mishura told CCN:
VPNs are to be honest one of the most frequently used services by crypto-enthusiasts (what we see by our data). However, due to quite low price, it is usually a no-win to pay for it with Bitcoin or Litecoin; and that’s exactly what Lightning should solve. That’s what we are trying to showcase – paying even for low-priced products should be possible, convenient, and cheap using cryptocurrency.
The first merchant to use Lightning Network on Litecoin will be Surfshark, a VPN provider. Mishura says they hope all 4,500 of their merchants will be interested in integrating Lightning in order to reduce friction on both sides.
Lightning Network, of course, is a scaling solution created for Bitcoin, but it has been adapted and launched on Litecoin in recent times. The Lightning Network uses payment channels to settle transactions off-chain as opposed to traditional Bitcoin or Litecoin transactions. For Bitcoin, this means a massive increase in possible throughput once a majority of nodes have integrated the software properly.
Merchant Adoption
CoinGate works much like Coinbase used to work, primarily focused on the European market. They allow people to buy and sell cryptocurrencies with fiat options, as well as provide a payment platform. Coinbase once processed transactions for merchants but gave up the business to focus on its exchange. The move made Bitpay the premier Bitcoin processor for merchants.
CoinGate enables businesses to accept all major cryptocurrencies as well as numerous altcoins. Their standard fee is 1%, and clients can choose Bitcoin, dollars, or Euros as their designated payout.
Edge Wallet’s Paul Puey believes that merchant adoption is crucial to the global mass adoption of Bitcoin, and that what’s missing is an easy-to-use crypto payment terminal for merchants. One of the crypto-native payment processors will eventually have to unveil such a thing. It will have to be superior to existing payment terminals and frictionless for merchants, if crypto is ever to take off in a day-to-day, merchant-to-customer sense.
Litecoin users who want to try out Lightning Network can use it via Surfshark starting today.