Strike Expands To The Philippines

Strike, the bitcoin-based payment network and financial app, is expanding to the Philippines.

The move brings one of bitcoin’s best use cases, remittances, to one of the world’s largest remittance markets.

Ripe For Disruption

Long considered one of the best potential use cases for bitcoin, remittances are how individuals can send money between different currencies to each other.

This is absolutely crucial for many people in developing countries, and as such, remittances have evolved into a massive $700 billion market.

Because of their importance, you would think the powers to be would make sending them relatively easy and cheap. Wrong. Sending a remittance is ridiculously expensive, with the average global fees coming out to 6.3% of the amount sent.

Imagine if each of your Venmo transactions took a 6% cut. Now imagine if those Venmo transactions determined if your family gets to eat that day. That’s what many people who send remittances are dealing with.

Bitcoin, being the easy and cheap payment processor it is, is an attractive alternative to the traditional broken remittance system. It costs less than a penny to send money with Strike – a heck of a lot better than 6%.

And that’s what Strike is bringing to the $12 billion Philippine remittance market.

Strike Takeover

The expansion into the Philippines is the first move in what is shaping up to be a busy year for Strike.

CEO Jack Mallers says that expansions into Latin America and as many as 20 African countries are coming soon because of “an extreme amount of demand”.

These expansions, combined with its partnerships with payment providers Fiserv and Visa, tied to an $80 million Series B last year, make Strike a premier bitcoin player to watch in 2023.

We’ve highlighted Jack and Strike many times over the years in this newsletter as using bitcoin to tackle an important issue. While we all hope for the prices of cryptoassets to rise and the bear market to end, it’s important to highlight projects that are transforming money and creating more economic freedom in the world.