What if Bitcoin Lightning quietly took £1.5 BILLION a year from the card networks? 👀
The UK processes roughly £850bn of card payments annually.
Now imagine just 25% of that moved over Bitcoin Lightning.
That’s about £212bn of payments using a different payment rail.
At an estimated ~0.71% average merchant card-processing cost, that’s roughly:
⚡ £1.5 BILLION/year
in card-processing costs that could potentially be avoided.
Even looking only at interchange, we’re talking roughly £800m/year.
And that’s just the UK.
The interesting question isn’t:
“Can Bitcoin replace Visa and Mastercard tomorrow?”
It’s:
Why shouldn’t merchants have a choice?
For decades, card networks have been the default payment infrastructure.
Lightning offers another rail.
Fast. Global. Open. 24/7.
And potentially much cheaper for certain types of transactions.
£1.5bn is a big number to ignore.
₿⚡
#Bitcoin #Lightning #LightningNetwork #BTC #Nostr #BitcoinPayments #Payments #FinTech #UK #MerchantFees #BitcoinAdoption #OpenPayments #P2P #Sats
npub15j…t64nq
2026-09-24 04:40:57 UTC
Author Public Key
npub15j2mvnexly77n70feaaj7yrwg5wh58n8rves8jucjtgfx9axetxqnt64nqSeen on
wss://relay.guggero.orgPublished at
2026-09-24 04:40:57 UTCEvent JSON
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"content": "What if Bitcoin Lightning quietly took £1.5 BILLION a year from the card networks? 👀\n\nThe UK processes roughly £850bn of card payments annually.\n\nNow imagine just 25% of that moved over Bitcoin Lightning.\n\nThat’s about £212bn of payments using a different payment rail.\n\nAt an estimated ~0.71% average merchant card-processing cost, that’s roughly:\n\n⚡ £1.5 BILLION/year\n\nin card-processing costs that could potentially be avoided.\n\nEven looking only at interchange, we’re talking roughly £800m/year.\n\nAnd that’s just the UK.\n\nThe interesting question isn’t:\n\n“Can Bitcoin replace Visa and Mastercard tomorrow?”\n\nIt’s:\n\nWhy shouldn’t merchants have a choice?\n\nFor decades, card networks have been the default payment infrastructure.\n\nLightning offers another rail.\n\nFast. Global. Open. 24/7.\n\nAnd potentially much cheaper for certain types of transactions.\n\n£1.5bn is a big number to ignore.\n\n₿⚡\n\n#Bitcoin #Lightning #LightningNetwork #BTC #Nostr #BitcoinPayments #Payments #FinTech #UK #MerchantFees #BitcoinAdoption #OpenPayments #P2P #Sats",
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