Strike – a Bitcoin payments company and remittance app – announced Friday that it is now available for download to over 3 billion people worldwide, including dozens of new countries.

The international expansion will allow wallet users in India, South Korea, Sri Lanka, and other countries to remit payments to one another in both USD and BTC. 

Targeting the Global South

Speaking at Bitcoin 2023 in Miami, Strike CEO Jack Mallers explained that the company’s expansion efforts were primarily targeted toward those that needed better payment tools and technology the most. 

“It’s a lot of the global south,” said Mallers. “The global south has a lot to do with Bitcoin – they have a lot to say for where the world is going.”

An inexhaustive list of 47 supported countries presented during Mallers’ presentation included Bhutan, Brazil, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Kenya, New Zealand, Paraguay, and Uganda, alongside formerly announced expansions like Argentina, Nigeria, Kenya, and Ghana

Within those countries, Strike leverages the Bitcoin lightning network to enable fast and immediate Bitcoin and dollar-based remittances worldwide. Lightning is a layer 2 network that bypasses the fees of Bitcoin’s base chain, which can rise to levels that make small transactions infeasible when placed under stress. 

Global outreach for Strike was a two-and-a-half-year effort, which partly involved working with regulators in El Salvador’s Bitcoin Office to create a licensing structure for Bitcoin companies to legally operate. The nation was the first besides the United States to support Str