UPDATED 12:25 EDT / FEBRUARY 09 2022

BLOCKCHAIN

Bitcoin payments company OpenNode nabs $20M funding led by Kingsway

Bitcoin payments processor OpenNode Inc. said today it has raised $20 million in new funding led by Kingsway, bringing its valuation to $220 million.

The Series A funding round also saw additional investment from Twitter, Fidelity Investments affiliated Avon Ventures and bitcoin supporter Tim Draper.

OpenNode operates a secure bitcoin processing infrastructure for businesses that enables payments and payouts, invoicing, conversion and settlements. Using the platform, any business can accept or pay using Bitcoin and establish it as a payment channel without worrying about its volatility during automatic conversion.

Volatility can be problematic for businesses interested in accepting Bitcoin payments because the price of the cryptocurrency can fluctuate quickly. For example, the currency fell to $33,000 on Jan. 24 after reaching a record high of more than $68,000 in November.

“OpenNode has believed in the promise of Bitcoin and Lightning-powered payments for a long time, and demand is now growing exponentially,” said Josh Held, the new head of strategy at OpenNode. “For the last two years, the team has been heads down building solutions that support some of the largest brands and businesses in the world today.”

The company’s services are used by more than 14,000 users in at least 120 countries, according to its website. Its integrations are used for e-commerce websites and plugins such as Shopify, OpenCart and WooCommerce.

One of the benefits of using OpenNode is access to the Lightning Network, a Layer 2 scaling solution that makes transactions faster and cheaper on the Bitcoin blockchain.

Under standard conditions, the decentralized peer-to-peer network that secures Bitcoin only processes seven transactions a second and payments can take an average of 10 minutes to be confirmed. It’s also necessary for payers to dole out a network fee for processing, which can be exorbitant. Using the Lightning Network scaling solution, it’s possible to provide almost instant settlement times with low-cost transaction fees.

Cash App, a mobile payments service developed and operated by Jack Dorsey’s Block Inc., also provides bitcoin payments but only fully integrated Lightning Network capabilities just this week.

“OpenNode allows the retailer to accept Bitcoin without having to pay the banks or the credit card companies the 2-4%,” said Draper. “OpenNode can do it with only a fraction of the energy cost required for an on-chain bitcoin transaction.”

OpenNode also provides developer-friendly application programming interfaces so its platform can be integrated into already existing software and apps with only 10 lines of code. This plug-and-play integration can get the platform up and running in mere minutes and allow customers to pay using bitcoin just as easily as credit cards or other payment services.

The company said that it will use the funds to continue to build its payments infrastructure and focus on providing better onramps for merchants and businesses to accept and pay using bitcoin.

Image: Pixabay

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