Subway, one of the largest fast food restaurant chains, is testing payments with Bitcoin's scalability solution, the Lightning Network.
One of the world's largest fast food restaurant chains is once again opening its doors to Bitcoin payments. Subway is accepting Bitcoins as a form of payment from three of its franchises located in the city of Berlin (Germany).
Although Subway accepted Bitcoin payments in 2013 from a franchise in Moscow, Russia, this time it has implemented the Lightning Network solution to process its customers' BTC transactions.
Lightning Network is the leading Bitcoin scalability solution that enables instant, low-fee transactions and payments with this cryptocurrency.
McDonald's franchises in Lugano, Switzerland, and El Salvador are currently accepting Bitcoin payments via the Lightning Network. Pick n Pay, South Africa's largest grocery chain, has also integrated Bitcoin into its payment options in 39 of its stores in the country.
Bitcoin is becoming an efficient and secure means of payment
Daniel Hinze, owner of a Subway franchise that is accepting BTC payments in Berlin, told Cointelegraph that he began exploring the world of cryptocurrencies five years ago.
According to Hinze, Bitcoin has the potential to become the best monetary system in the world, he said this as a result of his intense research into this cryptocurrency in recent years. Since the Hinze franchise implemented the Lightning Network, it has processed more than 120 transactions with BTC, he commented.
In recent years, several food companies and franchises have adopted crypto assets as a means of digital payment, due to the ease they offer for carrying out cross-border, global and contactless transactions. During the Covid pandemic, cryptocurrencies played an important role in helping companies maintain and respect biosecurity measures, reducing physical contact and the need to receive cash. In addition, the payment process with BTC on the Lightning Network is very simple. Users only need to have a Bitcoin wallet to be able to successfully make payments with this option.
So, since Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency considered by many to be a viable, efficient and secure means of payment, the fast food restaurant chain Subway has added this cryptocurrency again to its payment methods.
Lightning Network, essential for globalizing Bitcoin as a means of payment
Lightning Network is a protocol designed to improve Bitcoin's scalability. The network works as a second layer that allows its users to do things that they normally couldn't do on the mainnet, such as sending instant transactions with very low fees.
This scalability solution uses payment channels to process BTC transactions. Payment channels are the cornerstone of how the Lightning Network works and the key to enabling unprecedented scalability on the network. The Lightning Network has the ability to drive mass adoption of Bitcoin by bringing the network closer to processing levels of approximately 1 million transactions per second (TPS).
In the middle of this year, Lightning Network developers reported that the network capacity had exceeded 4.000 BTC for the first time. Currently, Lightning Network capacity has hit a new all-time high of 5.142 BTC, growing 3% in the last 24 hours, according to data from the 1ML platform.
The Lightning Network has more than 16.300 nodes distributed around the world, mainly in the United States, Germany, Canada, Singapore and Ireland.
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