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

OpenNode Inc., a Bitcoin payment processor, announced today that it raised $20 million in new funding from Kingsway. This brings its value to $220 Million.

Additional investment was made by Avon Ventures, Fidelity Investments affiliate Avon Ventures, and Tim Draper, a bitcoin supporter.

OpenNode provides a secure bitcoin processing platform for businesses. It enables payments, payouts, invoicing and conversion, as well as settlements. OpenNode allows any business to accept Bitcoin payments and set it up as a payment channel.

Businesses that accept Bitcoin payments can face volatility because of the fluctuating price of the cryptocurrency. After reaching an record high in November, the currency dropped to $33,000 Jan. 24, after falling to $33,000 .

OpenNode believes in Lightning-powered Bitcoin payments since a long time. This is why demand for them is growing exponentially. Josh Held, OpenNode’s new head of strategy, said that. “The team has been working hard for the past two years to create solutions that can support some of today’s most important brands and businesses.

According to the company’s website, more than 14,000 people use its services in at least 120 different countries. The company’s integrations can be used to integrate with e-commerce websites as well as plugins like Shopify, OpenCart, and WooCommerce.

OpenNode gives you access to the Lightning Network which is a Layer 2 scaling solution that speeds up transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain.

The standard conditions for Bitcoin security are that the decentralized peer to peer network that secures Bitcoin processes only seven transactions per second, and payments can take on average 10 minutes to confirm. Payers must also pay a network fee to process transactions. This can be quite expensive. Lightning Network scaling allows for fast settlement times and low-cost transaction fees.

Cash App, a mobile payment service that Jack Dorsey’s Block Inc. developed and operates, offers bitcoin payments, but only this week has fully integrated Lightning Network capabilities.

Draper stated that OpenNode allows retailers to accept Bitcoin without the need to pay banks or credit card companies the 2-4%. Draper said that OpenNode is able to do this with a fraction the energy costs required for an on-chain Bitcoin transaction.

OpenNode offers a developer-friendly interface for programming OpenNode’s platform into existing software. This allows developers to integrate the platform into apps and programs with just 10 lines of code. The platform can be set up in minutes using plug-and-play integration. Customers will be able to use bitcoin as a payment method just like credit cards and other payment services.

The company stated that the funds will be used to build its payment infrastructure and provide better onramps to merchants and businesses for accepting and paying with bitcoin.