Major US Retailer Ditches Visa, Considers Lightning NetworksteemCreated with Sketch.

Today we have some fantastic news when it comes to Bitcoin's Lightning Network. We all know that Visa and Mastercard have reigned as champions when it comes to card payments but it appears here that not everyone is happy.

Kroger, US Retail Giant has decided to cut the Visa option from their Smith's Chain. This began on Friday when Kroger announced the decision to no longer accept Visa credit cards due to their extremely high and excessive fees.

While it's not a completely big blow to Visa, Smith's chain is a pretty big company with 134 food and drug stores across 7 states, and employees roughly 20,000 people.

According to the Chief Financial Officer Mike Schlotman, the card fees charged by Visa are higher at Smith's than any other alternative credit card brand. He mentioned that "Visa has been misusing its position and charging retailers excessive fees for a long time."

This has been a pretty common complaint considering Visa does have fairly high fees. In fact, Visa and Mastercard will be also increasing the transaction fees for US merchants who accept card payments in April 2019. The fees will however only rise for banks and not for merchants. But banks are known to pass on these fees to merchants. So at the end of the day, the merchants have to assess whether they will pass on these fees to their consumers, or eliminate the card payment option, which will also cost businesses customers as well. Either way, extra fees means that merchants lose out.

While this is a very frustrating circumstance for Kroger, Anthony Pompliano, the Managing Director of Morgan Creek Digital, sent out a tweet that offered a cryptocurrency alternative. Pompliano mentioned "Grocery Store Kroger is stopping the acceptance of Visa in over 250 stores because of network fees. Who knows someone on the leadership team there? The Morgan Creek Digital team will fly out to meet them and get them hooked up with the Lightning Network Nationwide."

2 hours later, he received a swift response from Nick, the Product Manager at Kroger Digital who confirmed that Yael is the correct person to discuss this with and that the would love to set up a conversation. Pompliano responded DM me. Let's do it. With Nick following up and stating, Let's make it happen. DM Inbound.

As you guys can see here, while Kroger hasn't accepted the Lightning Network just yet, this conversation shows the beginning of what could be, a major catalyst for mainstream adoption concerning Bitcoin's Lightning network. Kruger's pain of expensive Visa costs can be the Lightning Network's Opportunity. Personally, I'm glad that the Visa fees were such a pain point for Kruger because it highlights a true problem, one that is so painful for the company that they had to let the card provider go.

While many are concerned whether the Lightning Network is ready, and that XRP is also another alternative Kruger could adopt, the fact is, there's definitely room and space for cryptocurrency alternatives, especially when Visa and Mastercard are making it difficult for retailers and merchants by continuously hiking up their fees.

While it's only one retailer, like the Bitcoinist reported, it's a very big deal.

Smith's is the second Kroger brand to stop accepting Visa cred Cards after Foods Co. supermarkets in California. Here's hoping that if all goes well, the Lightning Network can be implemented as a payment solution so we can see a wider roll-out of this new technology across the Kroger brands. To put things in perspective, Kroger is the largest supermarket chain by revenue, the third largest employer in the United States and the third largest retailer in the world.

So what are your thoughts on this situation guys?

Do you think Major retailers like Kroger will move ahead and accept the Bitcoin and Lightning Network Payments?

And if this is the case, do you think it will kickstart a new wave of mass adoption for the Lightning Network?

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Disclaimer: Cryptopig content is written by a team of blockchain passionate people. We are not registered as investment advisors. Don’t take the information in this post as investment advice and make sure you do your own research before investing. Cryptocurrencies are a very risky investment, never invest more money than you can afford to lose.

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