CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Strike, the world’s leading digital payment provider built on Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, today announced it has raised an $80 million funding round led by Ten31 and joined by Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Wyoming, and other investors, with participation from existing investors. The capital will be used to drive Strike’s efforts to revolutionize payments for the largest merchants, marketplaces, and financial institutions in the payments industry.

“We’re moving full speed ahead not just to integrate Strike’s revolutionary payments with leading merchants, but globally, with a variety of businesses and partners to innovate and deliver on more financial inclusion,” said Jack Mallers, founder and CEO of Strike and a pioneer of Bitcoin’s Lightning Network. “We appreciate the continued support of investors who’ve backed Strike since our founding and are excited to welcome new partners to support our mission, disrupt the industry, and define the future of payments with a truly global, open, secure, instantaneous, virtually free network.”

The funding comes on the heels of Strike’s public launch of its flagship API. Initial partners include some of the world’s largest point of sale and e-commerce platforms such as Blackhawk, NCR, and Shopify. The Strike integration offers an alternative experience to traditional card networks by leveraging the underlying technology of the Bitcoin Lightning Network to allow for instant, global, cash-final payments while eliminating legacy processing fees like interchange. Strike’s integration is accessible by any consumer in the world that can move money using the Lightning Network, including more than 70 million Cash App users.

“Strike and Ten31 have a shared vision for the positive impact bitcoin can have on the world and are mutually aligned on accelerating its adoption. It was therefore a natural fit to partner with Strike as its lead investor,” said Grant Gilliam, Co-founder and Managing Partner of Ten31. “We believe Strike is poised to disrupt the financial services and payments landscape, enabling a more efficient, innovative, and inclusive financial experience for everyone. We are excited about supporting Strike’s next phase and strengthening our partnership together.”

Strike will use the capital to further enhance its growth, continue expanding existing partnerships, and launch new partnerships. “Enabling a cheaper, faster, and open payment network with some of the biggest financial institutions in the world isn’t fast and easy, but it’s happening. Every company that’s in the business of moving money is interested in superior payments, and we’re in talks with many of them. It doesn’t get any bigger and more exciting than innovating in payments for the betterment of the world,” Jack said.

Beyond its commerce API, Strike also plans to release new product lines enabling entirely new types of customers, such as large financial institutions and businesses, to not only receive payments but send them as well. With these products, any financial service can easily integrate Strike’s world-class payments infrastructure without any need to build in-house solutions. In this world, businesses can enable jaw-dropping payment experiences for their customers, allowing them to move their dollars around the world, shop online, and make micropayments in ways that were previously impossible. “Businesses and institutions want a groundbreaking experience sending payments as well,” Jack said, describing the new API capabilities. “We can empower businesses to move money in ways networks such as card networks and SWIFT can’t, and we pay these partners in the form of commissions to do so, which makes it an exciting innovation for everyone. We’ve seen a lot of demand here.”

Strike has also seen exponential growth on the consumer side of the business with over two million downloads of the Strike app to date. The Strike app provides a novel experience that allows users to send dollars anywhere in the world, instantly, and with no added fees. Strike’s app is especially important as a way to eliminate exorbitant remittance fees for people sending money home to family and friends. Strike also expands access to basic financial services for millions of people lacking traditional bank accounts and enables even the smallest businesses to tap into a revolutionary global payments network.