Photo: Pixabay
You definitely have heard about the man who made a history paying 10,000 Bitcoins for two pizzas. It was in 2010. But it’s not the end of the relationship between pizza and Bitcoin.
This week more than 150 people have bought pizza with Bitcoin. No, it’s not a flash mob. It’s a new opportunity available in the Lightning Network app.
Domino’s Enters the Crypto World
Domino’s Pizza, a pizza restaurant chain that was founded in 1960 in the US, has seriously expanded since that time. But now it has decided to enter not a new country but a new world – the crypto world.
Now it is one of those stores that accept payments made in the world’s major crypto Bitcoin. As Domino’s has added BTC to its payment options, its hungry customers, who want to eat their favorite pizza, can pay using their crypto assets.
The payments are to be conducted via the Bitcoin Lightning Network which is a second layer protocol designed to solve the scalability and transaction speed issues of the Bitcoin blockchain.
Lightning Pizza
Lightning Pizza app has been developed by a seven-person startup staying behind San Francisco-based Bitcoin payment app called Fold. And according to the developers, it has all chances to become the “first Nation-wide retail service powered by lightning payments meant to spread utility and spur awareness and adoption.”
The company promises that “every order is 5% off, <$0.01 transaction fees, instant settlements and ~30min delivery time.” But it is only the first phase of the service development, some errors are quite explicable. As it was reported, not all users had managed to order everything they wanted via the app.
Fold Services
It’s not the first experience for Fold in providing customers with an opportunity to pay for various products using Bitcoin. For example, it is already possible to make crypto payments for Starbucks products and Uber services.
Moreover, the company is planning to integrate lightning for other its shopping options, including Whole Foods, Dunkin Donuts, and Target. But it is not an example of official partnerships with brands, that’s why Fold needs to place orders on behalf of its users and then to convert payments to fiat. At the current moment, it is still unclear what impact such a model has on the company’s revenue.
Speaking about their initiative with lightning, Fold product lead Will Reeves said that one of their aims is to show the community that we have already reached the point when the technology is ready for mass adoption.
The startup serves roughly 1,500 users per month. Since the launch of its first version in 2014 it has already facilitated approximately 35 000 Bitcoin transactions and now the team is planning to build mobile versions of the Fold app for both Android and iOS devices.
