The partnership aims to use the potential of both companies for creating new routes and payment options for bilateral cross-border trade between Vietnam and Africa using the Lightning Network

Neutronpay startup, which provides Lightning Network infrastructure for global remittances and payments, has partnered with African Lightning payments company Bitnob to improve cross-border transactions between the continents.

By leveraging Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, the partnership enables better trade relationships between Vietnam and Africa. Namely, it addresses the issues of financial inclusion and slow, expensive cross-border payments, allowing both businesses and individuals to perform fast, secure and affordable transactions using fiat and bitcoin.

Bitnob notes that trade relations between Vietnam and African countries have grown remarkably over the past decade. To compare, the bilateral trade amount rose from $2.52 billion in 2010 to $5.5 billion in 2022. The tendency leads to mutual benefits and significant improvements in both economies.

However, traditional cross-border payment methods have a lot of inefficiencies. Using innovative blockchain technology will?provide African businesses with an advantageous alternative while sending and receiving money to/from Vietnam. The good thing is that the receivers, who are often unbanked or underbanked, don’t necessarily need to use Bitcoin themselves.

The power of the Bitcoin Lightning infrastructure enables funds from Vietnam and Africa to be settled in users’ local fiat currency within minutes. Besides, lower fees mean higher income amounts for those households who rely on remittance in their daily lives. Enhanced inflows would potentially provide a stable source of income, promoting domestic consumption, investment, and economic growth in the countries involved.

This is only one example of how blockchain and crypto can increase financial inclusion, enable families to access better education, healthcare, and housing, and help fight poverty and hunger.

Earlier, Bitnob partnered with US-based crypto payments company Strike to facilitate remittance from the US into Africa.