TL;DR

The new partnership between Paytomat and Bitfury has brought the Lightning Network to many restaurants and other vendors in several European countries.

Paytomat App, available for Android and iOS, will allow crypto holders to make instant payments via the Lightning Network.

The app also allows users to identify participating vendors, store coins within the wallet, and scan the barcode to make a payment.

The newly-announced partnership between Bitfury and the crypto payment platform Paytomat might soon change the way people pay for their meals in restaurants. While its original purpose is to reduce the number of recorded transactions on the blockchain, the two firms believe that the Lightning Network (LN) will also make crypto payments more accessible and practical.

Bitfury has our own #LightningNetwork engineering team, @lightning_peach that works every day to bring faster payments to bitcoin. Today is a huge milestone as they’ve announced a partnership with @paytomat , a leading merchant plugin startup. https://t.co/Vp4BnBwEjN — The Bitfury Group (@BitfuryGroup) November 29, 2018

Due to the terms of the partnership, the network will be installed into Paytomat’s platform. Anyone using Paytomat App will be able to make payments to their favorite vendors within the network. That way, a deeper connection between vendors and crypto holders is established, while the second-layer protocol allows for safe and instant payments.

At first, this will only be an option within Italy, Ukraine, Spain, and the Netherlands. Besides, Bitfury is collaborating with the governments of said countries in an attempt to bring additional crypto and blockchain-related projects, one of which is a blockchain-based auction system within Ukraine.

The Lightning Network and Paytomat app

As mentioned, the Lightning Network was imagined as an additional layer that is to be added to Bitcoin’s blockchain. The idea to invent it came as one potential solution for Bitcoin’s scalability problem. Bitcoin can only handle a few transactions per second, but the coin has grown so popular around the world that this is not enough to handle all of the transactions being made.

The Lightning Network was invented as a solution, and it will serve as a new layer where users can establish payment channels between each other. These payment tunnels can be used for as long as necessary for sending payments back and forth. When the final payment is made, and the channel between two parties is closed, all of the transactions will be considered in an attempt to calculate the coin movements. This final calculation will be treated as a single transaction that will be recorded on the blockchain, and thus the pressure will be significantly reduced.

As mentioned, the LN is to be built into Paytomat platform, and Paytomat App will allow users to access it. Within Paytomat ecosystem, a wide range of potential vendors can be accessed, with more of them having the ability to sign up and become partners with the company.

All participating vendors will be visible within the app, and users will always know where they can spend their coins. Once they locate a vendor they like, users can pick certain products and use a 3D scannable barcode to make an instant payment. They can even store their coins within the app’s contains multi-coin wallet. The app is already available for iOS and Android devices, but also for PC.

The Lightning Network is here

The Lightning Network has arrived, and it is ready for adoption. All that it takes now is for vendors and crypto holders to start using it. Bitfury stands out as one of the leading developers of this project, and it worked on it via its subsidiary called LightningPeach. The subsidiary’s development team is being led by Pavel Prikhodko, who praised the new partnership in a recent statement. He also mentioned that the company aims to make all of the POS terminals crypto-friendly as well.

Paytomat’s CEO and Founder, Yurii Olentir, also commented on this development by stating that there will always be demand for this technology for as long as there are firms and customers ready to work with crypto. While the partnership is a big move regarding the adoption of the LN, it is still only the beginning. The new technology holds a lot of potential, and breakthroughs are expected to make it even better as the protocol develops further.

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