By cryptoadmin Lightspark, a Bitcoin Lightning Network financial services company, has announced the release of its UMA Extend feature, which focuses on increasing the interaction between crypto and legacy rails in the U.S. With UMA Extend, businesses can opt in for a direction that can be linked to an account, allowing them to instantly receive LN payments settled in dollars.
Lightspark Announces UMA Extend, Offers Lightning Network Payments Settled to Legacy Accounts
Cryptocurrency companies are rushing to link the decentralized finance world with the legacy banking finance ecosystem. Lightspark, a financial services company focused on delivering Lightning Network (LN) based products, has announced the release of UMA Extend, a solution that opens the gates for the settlement of LN payments to bank accounts in the U.S.
Extend leverages Unified Money Addresses (UMA), a protocol open-sourced by the company in October which allows each user to have an email-like address to send and receive money. Extend links this protocol with “eligible recipients.” While Lightspark did not specify which recipients were eligible, the company did state that it was “compatible with over 99% of U.S. banks that accept real-time payments.”
David Marcus, founder and CEO of Lightspark, demoed the solution in his account on X, showing that each payment gets sent and settled almost in real time. This opens the possibility for increasing adoption of the always-connected, low-fee LN network by a wider financial audience.
According to Lightspark, the UMA protocol has already been adopted in 120 countries and has the support of names like Coins.ph in the Philippines, Ripio in Latam, and others.
The extension of UMA is a step into Marcus’ vision of LN’s future. In May, Marcus declared that he believed LN would become the settlement network for world currencies. “Any corporation that needs to move money will end up using, directly or indirectly, LN and bitcoin,” he stressed at the time.
Cryptocurrency exchanges like Coinbase, Bitso, and Nubank use Lightspark’s services to provide LN support for deposits and withdrawals.