How the Lightning Network can help startups close the cash flow gap

(BPT) – Cryptocurrency like Bitcoin is top of mind for many businesses. However, for startups and small to medium-size businesses (SMBs), integrating a Bitcoin Lightning Network to receive instant payments can be difficult. Without funding to create and manage a Bitcoin infrastructure, SMBs face major barriers to receiving Bitcoin payments. Voltage, a fully managed Lightning solution, wants to empower allowing startups, SMBs and other futuristic thinkers with the chance to be part of building the new digital economy. Read on to see how Voltage and Lightning Network can help your business jump into the world of global digital commerce. 1. Infrastructure Creating and integrating a Lightning Network infrastructure is one of the biggest barriers for startups and SMBs. Not only is it expensive to create the infrastructure, but a dedicated engineering team is needed to integrate and manage it. Voltage allows your company to use the Lightning Network without needing to create the infrastructure or hire DevOps, support engineers and other roles to manage it, so you don’t have to wait to launch your next big idea. A great example of how Voltage can help businesses leverage the Bitcoin and Lightning Network is the platform Podcast Index. This alternative podcast directory allows content creators to receive payments without a middleman. The podcast company created a “Value 4 Value” platform that allowed podcasters to monetize and for listeners to directly transfer value to content creators. Managing the infrastructure while delivering reliability, consistency and scalability was complex and costly to do locally. Podcast Index needed to offload the learning curve of running a node to receive payments from listeners. By working with Voltage, Podcast Index was able to save time, ensure reliable payments and effortlessly configure backups, updates and more. More importantly, it allows the company to easily scale to millions of payments as the business grows. Voltage also offers businesses a simple way to observe their payments along the Lightning Network. You can easily measure your business’s success by capturing data and making detailed analysis over time so you can adjust your approach and goals. 2. Liquidity Liquidity is an important aspect of receiving and paying with Bitcoin quickly over Lightning. Businesses need inbound liquidity to receive payments, and consumers need outbound liquidity to send payments. Liquidity is essential for startups and SMBs to ensure a secure and reliable cash flow, which has historically been a problem for small businesses. According to a 2022 research study, 50% of invoices issued by small businesses are late and 12% are paid more than a month after they’re due. This costs small-business owners millions of dollars a year. Using the Lightning Network, SMBs can reduce unpaid invoices and human labor to track down payments, closing the cash-flow gap. Opening channels to receive payments to your node can be costly and difficult to manage. To solve this problem, Voltage recently launched Flow 2.0. This simple-to-use liquidity service provider (LSP) detects a payment and instantly opens a just-in-time channel to ensure it reaches your node, solving cash-flow issues. Why is Flow 2.0 a boon to startups and SMBs? Because it allows providers, app developers and merchants to offer their customers a noncustodial, private and seamless Bitcoin payment experience on the Lightning Network. Also, merchants can instantly receive payments and maintain a steady cash flow. Best of all, businesses can accept payments without imposing minimum purchase amounts or needing credit cards or other intermediaries. When needed, SMBs can easily scale up to receive 10,000 payments per day. Adopting the Lightning Network so your business can receive a steady cash flow of Bitcoin doesn’t have to be difficult. To learn more about Voltage’s enterprise tooling and services and how you can implement them at your business, visit Voltage.Cloud/Enterprise-License.