Digital payments firm Strike is expanding its international money transfer service that runs on Bitcoin’s Lightning Network to the Philippines, in a push to tap into the country’s $35 billion remittance market, one of the world’s largest.
The remittance service, Send Globally, will be available in the Philippines starting Tuesday, according to a press release. It runs on the Lightning Network, a “layer 2” scaling solution that enables cheaper and faster Bitcoin transactions. Funds sent via the service from abroad can be received as local currency in the recipient’s bank or mobile money account, according to the release.
Strike, which has made waves through its work with El Salvador to support bitcoin as legal tender in that Central American country, is hoping to upend the traditional multi-billion-dollar remittance industry, which it says is plagued by high fees and slow processing times, by leveraging Lightning’s low-cost and near-instant payments to serve the millions of users who send over $12 billion from the U.S. to the Philippines each year. Send Globally already has deals for service in three African countries.
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