Cash App Adds Support for Lightning Network

The popular mobile payments service Cash App has added a second-layer payments protocol, Lightning Network, to allow users to transact with Bitcoin.

The idea of adding the protocol was originally teased 3 years ago. Earlier this year, the feature was announced secretly among a few users. At the time, the company founded and run by former Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey had not issued an official notification.

Some Cash App users reported that Lightning’s functionality was now available on the platform and shared screenshots on Twitter that they were able to use it to transfer or withdraw Bitcoin (BTC) in a matter of seconds with much lower fees.

The news was reported by the company’s head of product Michael Riani on Twitter:

You can now receive #bitcoin instantly via the Lightning Network in @CashApp! ⚡

– Open Cash App
– Money tab -> Bitcoin
– Share QR code or link

What do you think?

Try it by sharing your link below 👇 pic.twitter.com/rg1BbzyLMB

— Michael Rihani⚡️ (@MichaelRihani) October 25, 2022

With the official launch of the free-to-use feature, Cash App customers can send or receive payments worth up to $999 in Bitcoin every seven days.

Reportedly, to receive Bitcoin via Lightning, the sender does not need to have a Cash App account, but will need a Bitcoin wallet with the Lightning feature enabled. For customers in New York, however, the option is not available.

Cash App joined the crypto sector back in 2019 when Block, Inc. (the company that created the app) launched a Bitcoin trading service. Block also holds a Bitlicense (a license issued by the New York State Department of Financial Services) and can legally make payments or transactions related to digital currencies.

Lightning will help Cash App scale and process millions of transactions per second, a development that allows transactions to be done faster and cheaper.

At the start of the project, the developers have limited open access intentionally, under the premise of protecting users from pouring too much money into the yet-to-launch network. After improvements, however, Lightning can comfortably handle more and larger transactions, helping to reduce the fees that accrue when opening a large number of small channels.

Author

Alexander Stefanov

Reporter at CoinsPress

Alex is Editor-in-Chief of Coinspress and co-founder of Millennial Media Group, with nearly a decade of experience covering financial markets - crypto first, then everything else. It started in 2016 with Bitcoin. Like most people at the time, he didn't fully understand it - so he kept digging. Blockchain, tokenomics, the projects, the cycles. That curiosity never stopped, and eventually pulled him into traditional markets too: equities, commodities, macro. Not because he left crypto behind, but because you can't properly understand one without the other. What drives him is straightforward: he wants to know why something is happening, not just that it's happening. Most market coverage stops at the headline - price up, price down, here's a chart. Alex finds that kind of reporting actively unhelpful. If you walk away from an article without understanding the mechanism behind the move, what did you actually learn? He holds a degree in Tourism from New Bulgarian University - not the most obvious path into financial markets, but markets have a way of pulling in people who are simply too curious to stay out. He has authored over 200 in-depth analyses and more than 10,000 articles across crypto and traditional finance. He still thinks every day in markets teaches him something new. That's probably why he hasn't stopped.