Bitpay Adds Lightning Network, Youth Fashion Brand Pacsun to Accept Payments via Lightning

On April 6, one of the largest cryptocurrency payment platforms in the world, Bitpay, announced the Atlanta-based company has integrated bitcoin payments via the Lightning Network. According to the announcement on Wednesday, the youth-focused American retail clothing brand Pacific Sunwear (Pacsun) will be the first merchant to leverage Bitpay to accept Lightning Network payments.

Bitpay is now allowing bitcoin payments via the Lightning Network (LN) in order to allow bitcoin users to pay using the crypto asset’s second layer network. Before adding LN payments, Bitpay accepted bitcoin (BTC) via onchain, alongside bitcoin cash, ethereum, wrapped bitcoin, shiba inu, xrp, and a slew of stablecoins. Bitpay says users and merchants can now utilize the LN payment rail with wallets like Cashapp and Strike.

“Consumers now have a low-cost alternative when paying with Bitcoin at a Bitpay-enabled merchant,” the company said on Wednesday. According to the announcement sent to Bitcoin.com News, merchants don’t need to change anything to accept LN payments. Customers will simply need to choose from over 100 LN-enabled wallets, the Atlanta-based crypto payments firm further detailed.

“Bitpay’s integration with the Lightning Network offers customers more choice and merchants more ways to be paid leveraging blockchain technology,” Tony Gallippi, Bitpay’s co-founder, explained in a statement. In addition to the LN support announcement, Bitpay revealed that the youth-focused retail clothing brand Pacsun will be the first merchant to accept LN payments via the integration.

Pacsun first revealed it would accept 11 crypto assets through Bitpay on October 5, 2021. At the time, Pacsun said it witnessed a demand for alternative payments as it saw an ​​“increasing desire towards cryptocurrency.” Mike Relich, the co-CEO of Pacsun, explained that the company was “excited to be one of the first Bitpay partners to accept bitcoin payments using the Lightning Network.” Relich added:

Lightning Network [support] provides our customers with instant payments and exceptionally low network fees, and creates more opportunity for all holders of bitcoin to shop online at Pacsun.

The Lightning Network is a layer two (L2) payment protocol created by Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja in February 2015. The L2 network has both limitations and benefits and some beneficial prospects include atomic swaps, granularity enhancement, speed, and privacy. At the time of writing, the L2 routing network’s capacity is $164.6 million total value locked (TVL) or roughly 3,700 BTC.

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