Travala now supports Lightning Network for Bitcoin payments

Tl;DR Breakdown:

• Travala has partnered with OpenNode to enable payments in Bitcoin Lightning Network. 
• The company supports more than 50 digital currencies for payment.
• Currently, the capacity of the network is at 3,300 BTC. 

Popular crypto-friendly travel booking platform Travala.com announced Wednesday it now supports Lightning Network for payments in Bitcoin. Besides Bitcoin, the company accepts payment in more than 50 cryptocurrencies, with the newest addition being Shiba Inu (SHIB), the second-largest meme cryptocurrency. 

The Lightning Network is a scaling solution for Bitcoin, and by supporting it, Travala customers can pay for services instantly and cheaper with Bitcoin. Per the announcement, the company partnered with OpenNode for this solution. 

Speaking on the development, Ryan Flowers from OpenNode mentioned how the network could help improve payments for the travel industry.  “The travel industry suffers from the downfalls of traditional currencies such as chargeback fraud, long settlement times, and high processing fees, and with Bitcoin payments on the Lightning network, we can solve all of these issues,” Flowers said. 

Lightning Network is growing rapidly

Since January 2021, many companies and exchanges have added support for the Lightning Network, resulting in the rapid increase of transactions and capacity of the network. For instance, the capacity of the Bitcoin Lightning Network was at 1,058 BTC on January 1. However, the number has increased to 3,300 BTC presently. The more the capacity increase, the more value that can be transacted on the network at a time. 

The primary reason for the network is to help make smaller transactions in Bitcoin possible. Oftentimes, people tend to pay more in transactions than the actual value being transacted, and that demines the use of Bitcoin for payments. However, the network makes Bitcoin payments cheaper and faster by using a channel-like mechanism to process the transactions.