On June 11, BitGo announced Lightning Earn, a product that allows corporate bitcoin treasury holders to deploy their capital as liquidity on the Lightning Network and capture routing fees. BitGo built this on Amboss Rails, and committed a portion of its own treasury to the product alongside clients.
This is a significant moment for Lightning infrastructure, and we want to explain why.
The Supply Problem Lightning Has Always Had
The Lightning Network routes payments through funded channels. A payment only travels a path if every node along it holds enough capacity to forward the transaction. For small amounts, this constraint rarely matters. For hotel reservations, plane tickets, and major commercial purchases, liquidity depth is the difference between a payment that goes through instantly and one that fails.
Institutional bitcoin has always been the natural answer. Corporate treasuries hold enormous amounts of bitcoin sitting idle. If that capital could be deployed as Lightning liquidity in a regulated, operationally sound way, the network's capacity would deepen and large-value payments would become reliable. What has been missing is the institutional-grade on-ramp.
BitGo just built it.
Through the integration with Amboss Rails, institutional clients deploy bitcoin into Lightning channels. Amboss allocates that capital within the network for maximum utility, routing payments and leasing liquidity where demand is highest. Participants access fee capture from that activity, denominated in bitcoin, tied to real payment volume on the network.
Mike Belshe, CEO of BitGo, put it directly: "We believe Rails gives our clients a credible way to deploy their bitcoin without compromising on custody or governance. We've allocated a portion of our own treasury to Rails, and we are excited to bring this capability to the institutions we serve."
Just in Time
The supply has arrived at exactly the right moment.
According to Voltage's 2026 iGaming Payments Benchmark Report, 925 million users were capable of making a Lightning payment in 2025, a figure projected to surpass one billion by year end. Major platforms including Coinbase, Binance, Kraken, Cash App, Wallet of Satoshi, Phoenix, Breez, and Cake Wallet have all built on Lightning rails, putting that capability in hundreds of millions of hands. Protocols like Ark and Spark are extending Lightning's reach further still, treating it as a lingua franca for cross-protocol interoperability.
Massive strides have been made. More are coming.
On the merchant side, Square is activating Lightning payments for more than four million US merchants. If global fintechs capture that momentum and adopt Lightning as a payment standard, the demand side of this market becomes very large, very quickly. The institutional liquidity supply to support that scale is now in place.
From Supply to Demand: The Amboss Payments API
The Amboss Payments API is where that supply meets business demand.
Businesses that integrate the Payments API can accept and send Lightning payments without managing node infrastructure. They connect, go live, and begin reducing payment processing costs immediately. Fees on Lightning are measured in satoshis, a fraction of what card networks, processors, or even newer crypto rails charge. The savings start from the first payment and compound with volume. No approval process. No credit check. No intermediary holding reserves.
Support for USDT and USDC on Lightning via Taproot Assets is available today, so businesses that need stablecoin settlement can access it through the same integration.
Once a business is processing volume on Lightning, Rails opens the next layer. Payments customers can activate a dedicated routing node, separate from their payment activity, that participates in the routing market BitGo's institutional capital is now deepening. Amboss manages the capital allocation and optimization. The business accesses fee capture potential from the network activity its own payment volume helps create.
The structure compounds: more businesses accepting Lightning payments deepens the demand for liquidity. More institutional capital in Rails deepens the supply. Deeper supply makes payments more reliable for merchants and consumers alike. Better reliability draws more adoption. Each step reinforces the next.
What This Means
As I said at the announcement: "BitGo's integration of Rails sends a clear signal that Lightning is fit for institutions. With the capital brought by BitGo and their clients, Bitcoin can serve instant payments at enterprise scale while capturing the benefits of Lightning's proliferation."
BitGo has built the supply side. The Amboss Payments API is how businesses put it to work: saving on processing first, accessing the upside of Lightning's growth second, and contributing to a network that gets better for everyone as it scales.
If you're ready to accept Lightning payments and own your payment infrastructure, get started with the Amboss Payments API.
Amboss Technologies builds data, software, and infrastructure for the Lightning Network. Amboss Rails is the institutional liquidity and routing infrastructure behind BitGo Lightning Earn. The Amboss Payments API supports bitcoin, USDT, and USDC payments on Lightning.