Digital wallet Strike announced the debut of the Strike API platform for marketplace and merchant businesses, according to a Thursday (Sept. 23) press release.
Twitter will use Strike’s API to allow its users to tip with bitcoin all around the globe with a Bitcoin Lightning wallet and let users in the U.S. and El Salvador — where bitcoin is now accepted as legal tender — bring in tips through their Strike accounts, the release stated.
Twitter Staff Product Manager Esther Crawford announced the global launch of Tips and the ability to tip with bitcoin using Strike in a blog post.
“We want everyone on Twitter to have access to pathways to get paid,” she wrote in the post.
Twitter’s Strike integration allows users of the social media platform in either the U.S. (except in Hawaii and New York) or El Salvador to receive payments instantly for free from anyone in the world, according to the release.
After downloading Strike from the App Store, Google Play store or Google Chrome Web Store, eligible users can add their Strike usernames to get instant global tips through the Bitcoin Lightning Network on Twitter, the release stated.
Twitter iOS users can send tips now, and the Strike Tips integration will expand to all users in the coming weeks, according to the release.
Strike’s deal with Twitter widens public access for business owners to the Strike API for instant global payments between buyers and sellers or fans and creators, the release stated.
“Today, we take a giant leap forward in growing global interoperability with the world’s first open monetary network, bitcoin,” said Strike Founder and CEO Jack Mallers in the release. “Today, with the Strike API, one of the world’s largest internet companies becomes interoperable with the world’s largest global monetary network making payments everywhere in the world cheaper, faster, and unlocking a whole new set of payment use cases never seen before.”
PYMNTS’ small- to medium-sized business (SMB)-focused study, “The Global Digital Shopping Index” examined the main changes triggered by the pandemic in four markets, including the U.K. and the U.S. and the different ways SMBs are adapting to these shifts alongside their customers.
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