Strike, a bitcoin-based payment network and financial application, is expanding its operations in the Philippines.
Source: Pixabay.com
This initiative aims to increase market reach through cross-border payments and money transfers. Currently, the Philippines is one of the world’s largest markets for such financial services. According to Statista, according to the results of 2021, the total amount of money transfers sent by Filipinos living in the United States to their homeland amounted to about $ 12.7 billion.
Jack Mullers, CEO of Strike, says that the international payment system has always been very complex in terms of technical features. He noted that SWIFT and Western Union are constantly implementing innovative solutions in this area, but their efforts are still not enough to create a flexible and maximally efficient system.
Strike uses instant micropayments via the Lightning Network. A second-level payment protocol is used on top of bitcoin, which allows you to make millions to billions of transactions per second across the entire platform. Users can convert dollars into local fiat currencies, such as the Philippine peso, for less than 1 cent per transaction over the network.
The application uses bitcoin to transfer money from one user’s account to another’s account, regardless of its price.
In addition to the Philippines, Strike also has intentions to intensify its activities in Africa and Latin America. Jack Mullers called the level of demand for financial services for money transfers in these regions extremely high. The company also intends to expand the scale of its business in Europe.
Earlier in January, Strike partnered with payment provider Fiserv, the parent company of Clover, to expand its services.
Last year, the company raised $80 million in a Series B round. Financial resources are necessary for a high intensity of actions for the development of payment solutions for sellers, trading platforms, and financial institutions.
As we have reported earlier, Philippines’ first private neobank launches its physical debit card.
