Announcing the Universal Money Address (UMA) standard supported by Lightspark

Announcing the open source Universal Money Address (UMA) standard supported by Lightspark

• UMA is just like email, but for money, it uses the Bitcoin Lightning Network for global settlement with messaging to support endpoints in any currency.
• Lightspark’s end-to-end enterprise-grade solution for UMA will unlock global payments for your customers.

October 23, 2023: The Universal Money Address (UMA) standard combines human-readable Lightning Addresses with enhanced messaging and integration with the Lightning Network’s real-time, global payment rails to make sending money as easy as sending an email. It is open-source and available for anyone to use.

UMA addresses enable near-instant, secure, and open payments in any currency.  UMA extends the capabilities of LNURL and Lightning Addresses to add messaging support for compliance and fiat currency FX. These additional features, combined with the Lightning Network's near real-time settlement capabilities and the global liquidity profile of Bitcoin, will enable people worldwide to send and receive money at low cost.  UMA is open source and available for all developers, businesses, and individuals to build upon - find out more here.

Using Lightspark’s UMA implementation gives our customers easy access to the UMA standard and the Lightning Network. We provide high-touch support from designated technical account managers, who can work directly with your engineers.  We also offer step-by-step resources, including UX/UI best practices, security protocols, and incentive and reward programs with go-to-market best practices to drive adoption.

Lightspark fully supports the UMA standard and has designed and built new tools that make it easy for businesses to adopt.

• Lightspark UMA SDKs are available for developers in Go, Rust, JavaScript/typescript, Python, and Kotlin+Java.
• Lightspark will launch a growth and activation program to accelerate UMA's adoption. To find out more, email sales@lightspark.com.

Lightspark customers Bitnob, Coins.ph, Foxbit, Ripio, and Xapo Bank will offer UMAs to their customers in the coming months - serving key cross-border corridors and connecting millions of UMAs in this first wave.  Additionally, infrastructure platforms, like Bakkt and Zero Hash, plan to offer UMA solutions to their enterprise customers - providing services for businesses that want to integrate real-time, low-cost, cross-border payment rails into their products. 

Lightspark solutions for open payments include:

• Lightspark Connect: enterprise-grade access to the Lightning network.
• Lightspark Predict: fast, low-cost payments over Lightning.
• Lightspark SDKs and API are the easiest ways businesses can integrate payments into their products and services.

FIND OUT MORE: Comprehensive documentation is available here.