UK Customers now have the option to pay for their purchases using the Bitcoin Lightning network alongside conventional cash and card methods at all Lolly tills and kiosks

CoinCorner, Bitcoin and Lightning Network services provider, has partnered Lolly, the hospitality software house, to bring Bitcoin payment functionality to the LollyPoS platform.

The Lolly platform is the first to offer Bitcoin payments in the UK hospitality sector. With the new cryptocurrency payment functionality, customers will be able to pay for their food and drinks with Bitcoin at lightning speed.

For the merchant, little will change. The hospitality providers will see transactions in pounds sterling similar to traditional payment methods. However, the clients who wish to use the new service should do some preparation.

First, they have to download the app, which displays their purchase value in Bitcoin. Once a buyer selects this type of payment, the checkout operator presses the Coin Corner payment button. It generates a QR code on the rear display for the customer to scan. Payments are made using the Lightning Network, so transactions typically finalize fast (in around 0.25 seconds).

“For a long time, the idea of paying with bitcoin seemed alien to both businesses and individuals, but with the seamless incorporation of CoinCorner Checkout into Lolly’s integrated payments technology, the user experience is both frictionless and familiar to everyone,” said Danny Scott, CEO at CoinCorner.

The integration is setting a precedent for innovative and inclusive cryptocurrency payment solutions in the industry, encouraging wider adoption through intuitive and simple experiences on both the customer and merchant sides.

Being novel for the UK hospitality sector, the efforts to implement the Bitcoin Lightning payment method have been earlier seen in other parts of the world. In 2019, the Bitfury Group integrated the Bitcoin Lightning Network into the merchant payment processing platform offered by HadePay to merchants across the United States, Canada, and the European Union.

The network is also increasingly used for remittances in the Philippines, Africa, Vietnam, and other countries.