Learn how to use the lightning network to grow your business and prepare it to accept payment globally.
It is estimated that the global economic GDP would rise by 2.70% over the next 12 months. As a result, businesses would have more transactions than they currently record. If your business is among those projected to grow, be prepared to also accept payments globally.
However, receiving payment from anyone worldwide is not easy for most businesses. From experience, there are many challenges. Some of them include keeping pace with country-specific regulations, fraud, complex processing of compliance checks, politics, and among others.
Bitnob is a solution that has finally solved the problems associated with accepting payments globally. A lot of its power comes from leveraging a new Bitcoin network called “lightning”.
We want to save businesses from having to deal with the problems associated with accepting payments globally. This is the reason why we wrote this article to, first, explain what lightning is, and then share ways to leverage Bitnob to handle the acceptance of global payments.
What is Lightning?
Bitcoin was created to enable the global exchange of monetary value without having to deal with the issues plaguing traditional systems. Despite solving an important problem, bitcoin is yet to see wide adoption among businesses. This is due to the platform's inability to process a high volume of transactions within a given time frame. Bitcoin can process only 10 transactions in a second — a significantly small number compared to the 65,000 transactions per second of platforms like VISA.
A few years ago, a new network was built on top of the Bitcoin network to solve the issue of transaction volume. This network is known as Lightning. Lightning now enables the Bitcoin platform to process as many as 1 million transactions per second, while still maintaining the other strengths of the platform.
Lightning has just laid the foundation for the future of global payments. This is what we have tapped into to bring you a product that gives you everything you want in a global payment acceptance solution, while also shielding you from the challenges.
How Bitnob Can Help Your Business
Receive Global Payments with Links — Drive Sales
Whether it is a small business, startup, or large enterprise, one of the quickest ways to receive payment is with a payment link. The world already has solutions that enable all sorts of businesses to receive payments in their countries. However, on a global scale, we are yet to see solutions that work without challenges.
Businesses that receive payments on a global scale either have to deal with ongoing issues or shun link payments.
With the introduction of Bitnob’s Payment Link feature, receiving global payments with links is now a seamless possibility. All you have to do is to generate a link from your dashboard on Bitnob for Business.
Your customer’s location is not a hindrance to helping you close a transaction, nor would a currency difference be an obstacle. A cross-border payment can now be processed in a fraction of a second.
This solution is possible thanks to the Bitcoin Lightning network. This new Bitcoin network offers all the benefits of using the Bitcoin platform while still being fast at processing transactions.
The network enables us to break the barriers inhibiting uninterrupted global payment. It means that you no longer have to deal with the bureaucracy, political obstacles, and other matters preventing seamless payment acceptance.
How To Receive Global Payments With Links
Any business can leverage our global payment links by following the steps below. The whole process of creating a payment link takes about 30 seconds.
- Create an account on Bitnob for Business.
- On your dashboard click on the “Payment Links” option on the menu on the left side of the page.
- Click on the “Create a Payment Link” button at the top of the screen.
- Specify the amount you want to receive, add a description and click on the “Request” button.
- A payment link is created and you’re given the option to either copy the link or share your payment link on social media.
The dashboard is further optimized to help you manage these links and track payments. You can see the full details of your payment links including the date created, the status, the BTC address, and the lightning address.
Accept Payment from Anyone Anywhere in the World — Increase Revenue
It is interesting that there are still certain countries that cannot transact with businesses in all countries. This is due to various reasons like wars, political sanctions, currency instability, and a host of others.
For example, there are some businesses in the US that cut off their Russian supply chain due to the inability of their Russian partners to accept payments. We have also witnessed Nigerian startups finding it difficult to access vital computing infrastructure services provided by businesses abroad due to the nation’s unstable exchange rate.
With Bitnob’s payment collection solution, businesses no longer have to be cut off from their customers. We leverage the Bitcoin lightning network to facilitate economic transactions where they would have been difficult or outright impossible.
By using the Lightning protocol rather than the classic Bitcoin protocol our customers enjoy the benefits of the Bitcoin platform while also enjoying short processing time.
Revenue is bound to grow when more customers can access a business’s products and services and pay for them because they tap into the power of Bitnob.
How To Accept Payment From Anyone Anywhere in The World
A business can integrate Bitnob in the manner that best suits them. For transactions carried out from mobile apps, we have easy-to-integrate Software Development Kits (SDKs) that can be used. Content Management System plugins and web SDKs are also available depending on what technology powers your website. We, of course, also have the Bitnob API for businesses requiring sophisticated payment processing.
Set up your Bitnob account here, and head over to our public doc for integration details.
Monitor New Sales with our Dashboard — Track Your Growth
Monitoring new sales and tracking growth is essential to the existence of all businesses. Tracking growth enables you to understand the progress of the business. It is only possible to detect problems with a business when you’re alerted by the business’s growth metrics.
Despite the importance of measuring a business's profitability and progress, existing payment acceptance solutions fail at helping customers track growth. Some solutions outrightly do not care about this, while the rest try but fail to do a decent job.
The case of Bitnob customers is a stark contrast to most non-Bitnob customers. Every customer enjoys access to a dashboard, the design of which was heavily influenced by being able to monitor new sales easily and gather vital data.
With Bitnob, you can switch between getting a bird’s eye view of new sales and digging for specific information about individual sales. As a result, it is significantly easier for Bitnob customers to tell how their business is doing.
How To Monitor New Sales With Our Dashboard
- Create an account on Bitnob for Business. We recommend creating a sandbox (test) account and a live one. You can use the sandbox accounts to explore our dashboard features, pending when you have new sales via Bitnob.
- Use your login credentials to access the dashboard. You are presented with a bird’s eye view of new sales. From there you can explore more specific information regarding your sales or business growth.
Blacklist Fraudulent Customers — Protect Your Business’ Integrity
Over the past 24 months alone, about 52 percent of big enterprises experienced varying degrees of fraud. These fraudulent acts vary from small to integrity-wrecking. The situation was a lot worse during the COVID-19 pandemic. Small and medium-sized enterprises were the worst hit.
A business’ proactiveness against fraud prevention, discovery, and management significantly impacts the business’s integrity. The last thing a business wants is to be embroiled in fraud cases while the competition continues to soar with positive reviews of the quality of its products and services.
We understand the importance of preventing, discovering, and handling fraud cases. This is why we have provided tools that help businesses in this endeavor. One of the ways we do this is to offer you the tools to blacklist customers who have proven fraudulent. With our payment acceptance solution, your business’s integrity is assuredly protected.
How To Blacklist Fraudulent Customers
To enjoy this feature, simply create your Bitnob account and integrate our payment acceptance solution into your business. Once this is done, our fraud prevention, discovery, and handling features are automatically enabled.
- On your dashboard click on the “Customers” option on the menu on the left side of the page.
- Click on the customer you want to blacklist
- Toggle the Blacklist Customer button to “On”
Grant Restricted Access to Dashboard — Collaborate While Maintaining Privacy
Effective collaboration is key to innovation, efficient processes, increased success, and improved communication.
Where there isn’t proper collaboration, innovation, efficient operations, increased success, and improved communication either happen poorly or outrightly cease to exist.
Lack of proper collaboration was reported to be one of the reasons new businesses fail. If you incorporate any solution into your business, you must avoid those stifling collaborations. You want to opt for only those that understand the importance of collaboration and even facilitate it.
Bitnob understands the importance of collaboration to the success of businesses. This is why we designed our dashboard around fostering collaboration.
With Bitnob, you can safely grant access to view important sales info. You can create sub-accounts for your employees, which provide them with access to the information they need.
How To Grant Restricted Access to Dashboard
A customer who signs up on Bitnob for Business automatically has this feature available to them.
- On your dashboard click on the “Settings” option on the menu on the left side of the page.
- Click on “Invite Member”
- Add the details of the person you want to add to your team
- Under the “Select Role” dropdown click on “Member” to grant them restricted access to the dashboard.
Add Bitnob to Your Site with the Click of a Button — Integrate With Convenience
32 percent of new businesses fail. One reason behind this is the lack of good solutions that are simple, convenient, and quick to integrate.
Therefore, it is not surprising that new businesses struggle since most solutions need to be fixed to increase their odds of survival. It does not have to be this way. This is why we have designed our payment acceptance solution to be simple, convenient, and quick to integrate.
There are different ways to integrate Bitnob, depending on the context. We have SDKs for Android and iOS platforms for mobile payments. For content management systems like WordPress, we have plugins that you can install.
For other types of websites and web apps, we have a web SDK. For more sophisticated use cases, we have an API to cover your entire needs.
How To Add Bitnob to Your Site Seamlessly
Get started with Bitnob by creating a sandbox account here. Afterward, head over to our doc, where you will find further details on integration.
Reach Donation Targets Faster — Make Donations as Convenient as Possible
Donations take time to reach their targets or never reach their targets often because the process is inconvenient. The same applies to fundraisers. This is also one of the reasons why it is sometimes falsely believed people do not give.
If you make a process difficult enough even the most willing person will not donate if you make a process difficult enough. This is the same reason why some people have noticed that certain donation processes fail, but other processes help reach targets quickly.
Bitnob is now the newest way to collect donations. Right at the heart of our payment collection solution is a feature specifically designed for donation collection.
We allow you to create donation links that you can share. Provide us with a title for the donation, a tagline, a note to show the customer, and a target, and we shall take everything from there.
Our system would design a nice-looking page on which willing participants can make donations. There are many more features to aid donation collection. It is just best if you try the features out yourself.
How To Reach Donation Targets Faster With Bitnob
Create a Bitnob account now. In your dashboard is a section where this feature can be accessed. Leverage this feature to collect your next donation, and reach targets faster.
- On your dashboard click on the “Donations” option on the menu on the left side of the page.
- Click on “Create a donation”
- Add the details of what would you like your donation page to have. For example, the name of your donation page, the description, the picture(s), and the start and end date of the donation.
- Click on “Preview” to have a look at your donation page. If you are satisfied with the details you’ve inputted, click on “Publish”
Sell Tickets with Finesse, not Stress — Ticketing the Modern Way
Ticket sales are still largely plagued with historical issues like poor sales, fraud, and difficulty managing and keeping track of sales. It still takes weeks and sometimes even months to sell out tickets that ordinarily should be sold in no time and without any hassles.
The traditional approach also makes it difficult to experiment with pricing. The bottom line is ticketing can be better than it currently is.
With the introduction of the new Bitnob ticketing feature, tickets can now be sold out fast, with finesse and no stress. Bitnob has considered what works and does not work and used this to build a ticketing solution for businesses. The solution has everything needed to help record success with ticket sales.
How To Sell Tickets Easily
Create an account on Bitnob for Business. After signing into the dashboard, you can head to the ticketing feature. Experiment with the feature and use it for the next successful ticket sales.
- On your dashboard click on the “Tickets” option on the menu on the left side of the page.
- Click on “Create ticket”
- Add the details of what would you like your events page to have. For example, the name of your event, the description, the price of the ticket, and the start and end date of the ticket sales, and so on.
- Click on “Save” to launch the ticket page for your event.
Bitnob was born out of a passionate desire to help businesses increase their odds of success or drive up revenue. A lot has been done in this direction thus, a business would benefit immensely from having Bitnob for Business integrated.