ANNOUNCING UMA AUTH & UMA REQUEST. LIGHTSPARK EXTEND UPDATE. INTRODUCING SPARK.

NEWS AT LIGHTSPARK SYNC

Yesterday, in Los Angeles, we hosted our first Partner Summit—Lightspark Sync. For a young company like ours, hosting partners, sharing progress, and planning the future of money movement was rewarding and inspiring.

We announced:

• Two new foundational capabilities for UMA - UMA Auth and UMA Request
• One Lightspark product update - Lightspark Extend for UMA
• Spark: A new open-source Bitcoin Layer 2, Lightning-compatible solution for stablecoins and self-custodial wallets

Lightspark is building the fastest global open payment network on Bitcoin. Our products simplify, streamline, and modernize the flow of global payments, whether using fiat currencies, stablecoins, or bitcoin. 

Exciting updates for the Universal Money Address (UMA). UMA is an open-source messaging standard built on LNURL. Think of it as email but for money. It’s a solution that enables transactions in fiat currency, stablecoin, or form of value that any human, business, or AI agent needs to move or exchange in real-time.

We’re excited about UMA's network effects. By the end of 2024, we estimate our partners will unlock UMA for nearly 300 million customers in 140 countries and 100 currencies.

UMA Auth. Think of this as OAuth for money. For businesses, it’s an exciting new extension integrating payments directly into applications and services. 

It’s an open standard built on Nostr Wallet Connect that enables UMA-enabled wallets to delegate the push and pull of money with limits set by the user. For businesses, it’s an exciting new extension integrating payments directly into applications and services. 

Even in today’s digital economy, payments on commerce platforms, content services, and messaging applications are challenging. Payment integrations can be complicated, taking up valuable development time and resources that can be used elsewhere. High transaction fees can eat into profits, and slow settlement times frustrate users and create risk. International payments add another level of complexity. These problems have been holding businesses back for far too long. UMA Auth solves many of these problems while providing users with easy linking to their existing financial apps and wallets.

At its core, UMA Auth is a two-way connection between your platform and your users' UMA-enabled wallets.  It takes the great features of OAuth and applies them to the world of UMA payments, making secure authorization easier for everyone. Now, users can log in to their wallets and authorize UMA payments using familiar set-up experiences. Users can control what applications can access their wallets, specify permitted actions, and set spending limits for each application.  The potential use cases are far-reaching – UMA Auth enables bank accounts or wallets to be connected to messaging and email apps; for example, users can make payments to content creators (no matter where they are) with live tipping or recurring payments and subscriptions. Like Oauth, UMA Auth does not require platform partners to be in the flow of funds but, instead provides a seamless payment experience for users with the UMA-enabled wallet of their choice.

UMA Auth is built using Nostr Wallet Connect, a secure, open protocol that’s gained significant traction in the Nostr and Lightning communities and simplifies connecting wallets to apps. We worked with the Nostr community and the team at Alby to build on the protocol, extending Nostr Wallet Connect to support UMA features. Some new key enhancements we’ve proposed are cross-currency support and client app registration.

UMA Auth brings a new level of innovation to Lightning, making payments more open, interoperable, and user-friendly. It's a big step forward in building a payment ecosystem that puts users first and opens up many possibilities for peer-to-peer transactions. For UMA Auth, we’ve released SDKs that make it incredibly easy for businesses to integrate UMA Auth into their applications.

UMA Request. Built for UMA, this will allow any business or UMA-enabled wallet to request a payment from another wallet on the network. UMA invoices and payment requests will transform transactions for both businesses and individuals. Merchants or service providers can now quickly request customer payments by creating a one-time invoice for a product or service. This invoice can be paid multiple times, making it incredibly flexible for the business and the end users. One of the standout features of this system is that it provides proof of payment, ensuring that both parties have a clear record of the transaction. UMA Request is versatile enough to handle a variety of use cases. Whether requesting payments from friends for a shared expense, managing merchant checkouts, or handling bills from service providers, UMA Request provides a simple and effective way to facilitate transactions across different scenarios. 

Lightspark Extend. This is a significant step forward, enabling Lightning payouts to bank accounts over domestic payment rails. It reduces transaction times and costs and simplifies payments. Companies can pay out users at their preferred endpoints with instant, seamless fiat currency transfers from local bank accounts to any eligible account in the user's chosen currency. In the United States, users can instantly receive USD from a Real-Time Payments-enabled local bank account. Lightspark Extend for the US and Mexico will be available by the end of the year, and Brazil will quickly follow. Lightspark Extend offers competitive pricing and unparalleled efficiency for businesses and individuals to send payments, ensuring that moving funds is faster and more cost-effective than ever.

INTRODUCING SPARK

A SOLUTION FOR STABLECOINS AND SELF-CUSTODY ON BITCOIN 

The future of payments must be on the most open, neutral, and decentralized network and should also enable all use cases - from non-custodial wallets to stablecoins. Spark is a new, payments-focused, high-performance, open-source, scaleable Bitcoin Layer 2. It extends Bitcoin and Lightning and enables self-custodial wallets to send and receive real-time payments at virtually no cost. Spark also supports tokens such as stablecoins, making it the most comprehensive open payment network built on Bitcoin. More on spark here: www.spark.info

At Lightspark, we’re committed to powering a new generation of payment solutions. Our products are built with regulated financial service firms in mind. We offer tools for direct, secure messaging between payment counterparties so that our partners can support a range of customer payment experiences and address risk management, AML/CFT, sanctions, travel rules, and other requirements.