Lightning Network-Focused Startup Lightspark Sets Its Sights on Latam

Lightspark hopes to enter Latin America’s cryptocurrency market through its partners in the region, including exchanges like Bitso and fintech institutions like Nubank. Nicolas Cabrera, Lightspark’s vice president of product, explained that the company will focus on targeting Latin America’s remittances and cross-border payments market, using its products to streamline these processes.

Lightspark Aims to Introduce Lightning Network Services for Cross-Border Payments in Latam

Lightspark, one of the largest financial services companies focused on offering products using Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, hopes to expand its services to Latam. The startup specializes in building infrastructure for other companies that want to integrate Lightning Network services, making bitcoin transactions quicker and cheaper for end users.

Lightspark’s use case is tailored to solve the cross-border payments and remittances problem, given that it can offer an alternative to banking transfers that can be slow and costly. Nicolas Cabrera, Lightspark’s VP of product, expects Lightspark’s rails to reach 250 million users in the next year, using the services provided by partners like Coinbase, and Latam’s institutions like Bitso and Nubank.

Cabrera referred to Latam as Lightspark’s most important market, as the region has shown to be open to adopting decentralized finance solutions, as opposed to other parts of the world. In an interview with local media, Cabrera stated:

The network of partners we already have here serves as a good benchmark for the types of experiences we can bring to our partners and scale globally.

This means Latam might be considered testing grounds for Lightspark products, seeking to test their products at scale before entering other markets with higher transactional volumes.

Cabrera highlighted that the region’s inflation and devaluation problem might help kickstart the company’s operations. He explained that moving money presented challenges everywhere, but these challenges were “more pronounced where there are large currency fluctuations.” “Many Latin American countries feel this acutely, but we all face the problem that money is stuck,” he concluded.

Lightspark’s services can be integrated seamlessly, allowing users to send payments in their currency of choice. The system allows for currency conversion behind the curtains, and the Lightning Network can be used in the background, with users not even knowing that they are leveraging this tool.