Flexa, the leading provider of the fastest and most fraud-proof payments network in the world, today announced that it will be enabling Flexa merchants to seamlessly receive payments via the Lightning Network in stores, in mobile apps, and online. Building upon Flexa’s recently introduced “Pay with Flexa” platform, this new integration represents the first time that merchants who would like to receive bitcoin via Lightning can do so in a fully compliant and fraud-proof way.
As the most popular layer 2 scaling solution for Bitcoin, the Lightning Network enables payments to be processed faster and more privately than they would natively on the Bitcoin blockchain, specifically using an off-chain “payment channel” protocol. Lightning was introduced in 2015 and has seen increased usage among bitcoin holders in recent years. In adding support for Lightning payments, Flexa is enabling merchants to receive payments from more bitcoin holders than ever before, including users of popular and soon-to-be-released Lightning-enabled wallet apps such as Eclair and Chivo.
“Flexa is committed to enabling pure-digital payments for as many merchants and as many of their customers as possible,” said Tyler Spalding, CEO of Flexa. “The Lightning Network and Flexa share the same goals of making digital asset payments more user-friendly, more private, efficient, and accessible for people all over the world. We’re delighted to begin accepting Lightning payments network-wide, and we look forward to enabling merchants to receive payments through additional Layer 2 scaling solutions and native blockchains in the near future.”
Today, Flexa is also introducing Transformers, a means for layer 2 scaling solutions such as the Lightning Network to connect to Flexa Capacity, the collateralization platform that Flexa uses to guarantee payments against fraud or theft. In order to ensure that all Lightning payments to merchants are secured from the time they are authorized until their full on-chain confirmation, Flexa locks a commensurate amount of Amp as collateral in Flexa Capacity smart contracts. In return, the individual stakers who provide Amp collateral earn network rewards based on the payment volume processed through Flexa’s Lightning nodes. In this way, merchants are assured that payments processed through Flexa’s Lightning integration will never be exposed to risk of loss.