A person living in the United States can now purchase a Domino’s Pizza with Bitcoin thanks to an app utilizing the Lightning network to enable the transaction.
The Lightning Pizza (LP) app allows a person to buy Domino’s Pizza by converting Bitcoin to fiat currency. The app allows a user to either get their pizza delivered or pick it up themselves. Lightning Pizza is based on a pre-existing app called Fold that lets you buy other takeaway items with Bitcoin. Fold can be used to pay for an Uber ride, Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, or Target.
Fold released Lightning Pizza (LP) on February 13 and the company is already getting feedback from customers. The release has allowed LP to iron out any bugs that may get in the way of ordering the pizza. Such a testing phase is crucial with a third party app that merely relays the transaction information to the actual pizza shop.
One can imagine that various issues could arise if the transaction is disrupted in some way. A pizza shop, for example, may only accept cash in the event of a power disruption. LP plans on deploying the project in Canada if all goes well in the United States.
Project leader Will Reeves says his motivation for making the app is to partly show that the Lightning network has practical uses. The app in part is to promote the Lightning network but is also a fun project to engage people with cryptocurrency in general.
The Lightning network seems to be a good fit for the project because it boasts a transaction time of around 30 seconds. Take that time and combine it with a delivery time of around 30 minutes for the pizza and you have a practical use of Bitcoin. One of the criticisms of Bitcoin has been its lack of scalability and the impact of this on consumers. A person, for example, would find it impractical to buy a morning coffee with Bitcoin if the transaction took 30 minutes to clear.
The LP app is only available in America at the moment yet the developers are eyeing off other nations to release the project. Keep in mind that Domino’s pizza itself has used PayPal payments in countries like Australia. This allows consumers to quickly pay with their PayPal account and even split a bill amongst friends.
The LP app at this stage appears like a Most Viable Product (MVP) and is more focused on developing as a startup before making any serious profits. It is a good development, moreover, in developing Bitcoin as a form of cash rather than simply as a novel way to store money.
