Retail and corporate users of Brazilian neobank Nubank will be able to make payments using BTC thanks to the integration of the Lightning Network.
Lightspark announced a partnership with Nubank, one of the world’s largest digital banks operating in Latin American countries. The aim of this collaboration is to provide the bank’s clients with access to the Lightning Network.
Specifically, Lightspark will integrate the Universal Money Address (UMA) standard into the bank’s payment platform. This protocol allows users to send and receive BTC using addresses similar to email addresses.
Corporate clients of Nubank will have access to Lightspark’s SDK and API, developer tools that will enable the integration of Bitcoin-based payment solutions into various products and services. According to the press release, Lightspark offers the best enterprise-grade entry point into the Lightning Network, providing efficient, low-cost, and nearly instantaneous transaction processing with BTC and fiat.
Nubank, according to the press release, is the world’s largest digital banking platform outside of Asia, with more than 100 million customers in Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia. Open sources say that by the end of 2021, Nubank’s services were used by 47 million retail clients and 1.1 million companies.
Lightspark specializes in developing the Lightning Network-based infrastructure for corporate use. The company provides tools for automated deployment and management of validator nodes, transaction routing, liquidity management, and BTC payment integration. Lightspark was founded in 2022 by David Marcus, ex-President of PayPal, Board Member of Coinbase, and Head of Facebook’s Novi crypto project.
Thomaz Fortes, Executive Director of Nubank Crypto, said in the press release that the integration of the Lightning Network is part of the neobank’s strategy to provide clients with faster and more cost-effective transfers made possible by blockchain. David Marcus, CEO of Lightspark and Board Member of Nubank, expressed the view that the collaboration will significantly increase the usage of the Lightning Network, which is necessary for the project’s further development.
It’s worth noting that the usage level of the Lightning Network increased by more than 1,200% from 2021 to 2023. In August 2023, the number of transactions on the network exceeded 6.6 million. For more information on what L2 Lightning Network entails, read the special material by CP Media.
