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On May 19, Strike announced it had expanded Bitcoin functionalities to support 3 billion users worldwide.
Users, including those in Sri Lanka, India, and South Korea, can now remit payments in BTC and USD.
Its latest announcement revealed support for 65 global markets, not just El Salvador, Argentina, and the US, where it operated before.
Strike has also integrated Lightning Address, which lets users set up email-like identifiers for sending them BTC instead of the general QR code.
Strike Expands to the Global South
Strike is a payment app developed by Zap, led by 29-year-old entrepreneur Jack Mallers.
According to the CEO, the latest expansion ensures that users who need better payment tools and technology can access them no matter where they are in the world.
Mallers also stated that the global south interacts a lot with Bitcoin and is very important to “where the world is going.”
Some of the countries now supported in the Strike app include Brazil, Bhutan, Guatemala, Ecuador, Honduras, New Zealand, Uganda, and Paraguay.
Before now, Strike had already included Ghana, Kenya, Argentina, and Nigeria in its list of supported countries.
Strike relies on the Bitcoin Lightning Network to facilitate the app’s operations in these regions.
The layer 2 network bypasses Bitcoin’s base chain fees which have been known to rise so high, making small transactions too expensive for users.
As such, Strike uses the LN to ensure that users in these countries enjoy fast and immediate BTC and dollar-based payments globally.
Before this global outreach, Zap had worked for two and half years with El Salvador’s Bitcoin Office regulators.
The aim was to create a suitable license that would support the operations of Bitcoin firms legally. This is not surprising given that El Salvador was the first country that supported Strike apart from the US. As such, it is now the headquarter for Maller’s company Zap.
While speaking during the Bitcoin conference, Mallers revealed the company’s plans to compete with Binance.
He further stated that the 3 billion people Strike support now first started on diverse crypto exchanges such as Binance and FTX, which haven’t been trustworthy so far.
Mallers Notable Announcements During Other Bitcoin Conferences
Before now, Zap CEO has always announced important developments in the crypto industry during Bitcoin conferences.
One of the notable ones was during the June 2021 conference when he announced El Salvador’s plans to legalize BTC as its legal tender.
The next year, 2022, Mallers announced that Strike planned to partner with NCR and Shopify. Shopify is one of the largest e-commerce marketplaces, while NCR is the largest POS payment provider in the US.
Strike aimed to partner with NCR to enable Bitcoin LN users to pay for goods with BTC at top stores like Home Depot, Mcdonalds, Walmart, and others.
While Strike hasn’t actualized its NCR partnership, it partnered with another POS giant Clover, in January 2023.
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