Moon Crypto Payment Project Enables Users to Shop on Amazon via Bitcoin’s Lightning Network

Amazon And Other E-Commerce Websites Can Now Use Bitcoin With The Lightning Network

Retail customers are one of the biggest groups of people that use Bitcoin, but mass adoption is still far away. Though there have been many merchants that have been progressive enough to adapt their systems to accept Bitcoin, a crypto payment processing startup decided to make the process easier from the crypto side. A new announcement from startup Moon allows users to download a browser extension and use their lightning-enabled wallet to spend Bitcoin at e-commerce websites.

Before the lightning feature was available, the company had launched a beta testing period for 250 users to use Moon for spending their crypto assets on websites like Amazon, connecting the extension to their exchange accounts. CEO Ken Kruger of Moon spoke with CoinDesk about the extension, explaining that it will offer a QR code, and the user will have a lightning invoice, which can be used with copying and pasting, if the code does not work. With that simple step, any lightning wallet can be used to pay.

The ability to use Bitcoin comes entirely from the wallet itself, rather than Amazon or the other e-commerce websites. In fact, these websites never even touch the Bitcoin payment. Though Kruger preferred not to say with the financial institution was making the conversion of Bitcoin to fiat for the transactions, he noted that the feature would be available for nearly every e-commerce website by 2020. Kruger reiterated that there is “no direct merchant integration,” adding that Moon offers various payment channels as well.

In their continued work, Kruger expressed that they would be integrating the feature into the Visa and Mastercard networks as well, and they will get a portion of the fees that merchants have to pay for using these credit cards.

Moon was only founded last year in New York, expanding the team to three individuals with a $100,000 investment from the Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator. Murat Aktihanoglu, the managing director, believes that Moon will be one of the “anchor” businesses in cryptocurrency that will be a “long-term portfolio company.” For now, the company will be working on a Series A funding round this year and will be “learning from user behavior.”

As Kruger sees it, there is a lack of usability in the market, considering the difficulty in conversion that most companies simply do not want to do the work for. However, the lightning network feature via the browser extension helps to shut down some of the naysayers and will help to find a widespread use case for Bitcoin. If everything goes according to plan with the Chrome Web Store’s review of the extension, it will be available to use by Wednesday this week.

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