Chipper Cash, one of Africa’s largest and most trusted fintech platforms, is now processing over 50% of its Bitcoin transactions using the Lightning Network, powered by Voltage. This milestone marks one of the most significant real-world deployments of Lightning at scale, and signals a new era of everyday Bitcoin payments in emerging markets.
Scaling Financial Access Across Africa
Founded in 2018, Chipper Cash began as a peer-to-peer remittance app and has since grown into a fully licensed financial platform serving millions of users across the African continent. Today, the company offers cross-border payments, virtual Visa cards, stock investing, and stablecoin remittances. But it's the adoption of the Lightning Network that’s redefining how money moves across borders, faster, cheaper, and more reliably than ever.
“Lightning-enabled payments have the potential to empower and accelerate greater, more reliable financial access across Africa,” said Maijid Moujaled, Cofounder and President of Chipper Cash. “Voltage’s infrastructure reduces the complexity of building on Lightning, letting us focus on scale. With Voltage, Lightning becomes the backbone for real-time payments, reaching people and businesses that need it most.”
Maijid’s personal interest in Lightning led to a weekend integration experiment. That test is now a production-grade system serving millions, with organic adoption driven by word-of-mouth and user experience alone. As one Chipper customer put it:
“It’s like discovering fire.”
Why Lightning Matters in Emerging Markets
In much of Africa, financial infrastructure is unreliable. Chipper’s fiat payment partners, despite years of collaboration, still experience frequent outages. This downtime frustrates users, delays commerce, and limits growth.
Lightning changes that. With near-instant settlement and uptime measured in decimals, not hours, Chipper’s users now enjoy a drastically improved experience, both for cross-border transfers and domestic transactions.
Lightning at Chipper Cash — By the Numbers:
- ⚡ 50% of Bitcoin transactions now run through the Lightning Network
- 📈 Adoption driven organically, without large marketing campaigns
- 🔁 Faster payment experiences for cross-border and everyday transfers
- 🛡️ Higher operational resilience compared to traditional fiat rails
Lightning’s integration also opens the door to global interoperability. Chipper users can now interact with Strike, Cash App, and other Lightning-enabled platforms, making Bitcoin the true native internet money across borders, platforms, and currencies.
The launch of Chessa, Chipper’s crypto-to-fiat remittance product, further underscores Lightning’s role. Users can send digital value via Lightning and receive it instantly in 25+ local currencies, a new standard for fast, cost-effective, and accessible remittances.
“What Chipper Cash is doing with Lightning proves that emerging markets can leapfrog outdated payment rails,” said Graham Krizek, CEO of Voltage. “With Voltage powering their Lightning infrastructure, they’ve unlocked payments that are instant, global, and low-cost. and they just work.”
The Path Forward
Chipper’s success story illustrates what’s possible when forward-thinking fintechs break free from legacy systems and embrace Bitcoin-native rails. In places where system downtime and fees are the norm, Lightning offers a leap into a future of reliability, speed, and financial empowerment.
And this is just the beginning.
As more platforms adopt Lightning, the global payment landscape will continue to shift toward open, interoperable, real-time infrastructure, and Voltage is proud to help power that future.
