The future of Web3 payments and crypto adoption – a conversation with Lightspark

Lightspark’s Co-founder and CTO, Kevin Hurley, explores how crypto can unlock global commerce, what businesses need to know about compliance, and how to prepare a future-ready Web3 payments strategy.

For those unfamiliar with Lightspark, can you briefly introduce the company and explain who your primary users are, both on the consumer and business side?

Lightspark is building the open payment protocol the Internet has always needed. While we can send data, messages, and media globally in seconds, money has remained locked behind a maze of intermediaries, borders, and outdated infrastructure. At Lightspark, we're fixing that.

We’re building enterprise-grade tools and infrastructure on top of the Bitcoin Network to enable fast, low-cost, borderless payments. Our customers include global exchanges, digital wallets, neobanks, and forward-thinking financial institutions—anyone looking to power real-time money movement in a secure and scalable way. On the consumer side, our technology is already powering payment experiences used by millions of end users through platforms like Nubank and Coinbase.

There’s no HTTP for money today—but that’s what we’re creating.  We’re giving builders and institutions the tools they need to plug into an open, global network for money movement, just as the early Internet gave them the ability to move information.

What are some of the most promising use cases where crypto payments offer clear advantages for consumers and enterprises alike?

The clearest advantage is cross-border payments. Traditional international transfers are slow, expensive, and fragmented. With Lightspark, payments are instant, final, and cost pennies, not percentages. This opens the door for remittances, microtransactions, creator economies, digital commerce, and treasury operations that simply aren’t viable today.

Crypto payments remove the drag. Whether you’re an artist selling globally or a business paying contractors overseas, real-time settlement without intermediaries is a game-changer. We’re seeing enterprise adoption now, not because of ideology, but because the technology is finally good enough.

Crypto payments promise benefits like reduced costs, faster settlements, and borderless reach. But compliance challenges, especially around KYC and regulatory clarity, are still a concern. How can businesses balance innovation with risk management in this space?

Balancing innovation and compliance is exactly why Lightspark exists. Our infrastructure is built to be both programmable and compliant. We’ve created APIs, developer tools, and integrations that abstract away complexity while supporting regulated environments and identity requirements. Our architecture lets institutions stay compliant while delivering an open payment experience.

Bitcoin’s base layer is secure but not built for UX or compliance. Our goal is to make Bitcoin's infrastructure enterprise-ready while preserving the decentralisation that makes it unique.

By offering programmable money movement with clear audit trails, cryptographic guarantees, and identity-linked addressing through UMA, we’re enabling the best of both worlds: regulatory peace of mind and the speed and efficiency of crypto rails.

As Web3 infrastructure develops, what role do you envision traditional financial institutions, particularly banks, playing in this new payment ecosystem?

Banks play a crucial role in the future of cryptocurrency adoption. We’re already seeing forward-thinking institutions embrace UMA—the Universal Money Address—as their entry point into programmable, global payments.

UMA works like an email address but for money. It abstracts away blockchain complexity and allows anyone to send or receive any asset instantly. It supports fiat, Bitcoin, and stablecoins, all through one open standard. We’re not replacing banks—we’re helping them evolve. UMA is the connective tissue between traditional finance and open payments. It gives banks the superpowers of crypto without the chaos.

With over 300 million consumers already able to receive UMA payments through Lightspark partners, we believe banks that don’t integrate this kind of infrastructure risk falling behind.

Given that regulatory uncertainty remains a barrier to mainstream crypto adoption, how do you foresee crypto and Web3 payment regulations evolving in key regions such as the US and EU?

We’re optimistic. In both the US and the EU, policymakers are starting to understand the difference between speculative crypto assets and real infrastructure for financial innovation. Clarity doesn’t mean compromise—it means confidence. The more we build real-time, open payments the right way, the faster we’ll unlock their benefits for billions of people. At Lightspark, we’re working with regulators, industry groups, and partners to shape policies that foster innovation while protecting consumers.

What actionable advice would you give to businesses looking to build a long-term Web3 payments strategy for 2030 and beyond? Where should they start today?

Start by building on Spark, our new Layer 2 for Bitcoin that brings native support for stablecoins, self-custody, and programmable payments. Spark is purpose-built for real-time, open money movement at a global scale. It's used today by companies like Magic Eden, Brale, and Privy—and it's open source. Spark isn’t just infrastructure, it’s an invitation to build the next financial layer of the Internet. If you’re serious about Web3 payments in 2030, this is the foundation. Spark makes it possible to offer payment experiences that are as intuitive as Venmo, as fast as Visa, and as borderless as the Internet, on top of the world’s most secure blockchain.

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