Big American supermarket ends with Visa and is considering Bitcoin!
The traditional American food chain, Kroger, with nearly three hundred supermarkets and stores in the US, recently announced that it would not support payments by Visa cards in April 2019. This is a reaction to the disproportionately high fees that this company charges with its partners. Visa currently has 323 million customers around the world, enjoying the position of the largest payment company in the world. The second MasterCard does not catch up with its 190 million customers.
Visa is obviously abusing its position. Business chains are virtually dependent on the services of this company, otherwise they can not serve a large percentage of their customers.
However, Kroger has decided to take a risk and ends with Visa. As a reason, she made an effort to maintain low prices for people who shop at Kroger supermarkets. At the same time, the company looks for new payment options with low fees.
Bitcoin Lightning Network Replaces Visa?
Bitcoin Lightning Network - a superstructure over the BTC blockchain, which makes virtually immediate payments with almost zero fees. This technology is far from being used as charges for classical Bitcoin transactions are virtually negligible and the speed is sufficient for most applications. But if Kroger really started to support BTC, it is quite possible that the network would overwhelm. The Lightning Network is therefore a very good solution.
However, we can not assume that Bitcoin will replace Vis. It is uncertain how many people would be willing to pay in this way. However, the crazy times of 2017 are gone and the public has been crippled for the sake of falling prices.
Anyway, if Kroger started accepting payments in BTC, it could cause a big boom of the crypt-market. Bitcoin would gradually start to use more and more people, and that is exactly why it was created.
Anthony Pompliano and Kroger
The well-known bitcoin evangelist Anthony Pompliano immediately responded to this message and offered Kroger assistance in implementing the Bitcoin Lightning Network in their business chains.
It did not take long, and his team in Morgan Creek managed to contact Kroger. The first call is over and it looks promising.
Kroger Digital is open to new opportunities and is actually considering implementing the Bitcoin Lightning Network as a payment method. Hopefully, this step of Kroger will help and inspire other great players like Wallmart or Whole Foods.