Strike is the simplest crypto-adjacent remittance product on the market. It looks like Venmo. You type a USD amount, your recipient receives their local currency. The Bitcoin Lightning Network does the actual transfer underneath — but you and your recipient never see Bitcoin, never manage a wallet, never deal with private keys. For most users, it's indistinguishable from a regular money-transfer app, except the fees are usually zero and the transfer takes seconds.
This guide explains what's actually happening, where Strike is available, and when it's the right choice versus Wise or Remitly.
The 30-second explanation
Bitcoin's main blockchain is slow (~10 minutes per transaction) and can have meaningful fees ($1-5). It's not designed for small everyday payments. The Lightning Network is a second layer built on top of Bitcoin that fixes both problems — sub-second settlement, fees measured in fractions of a cent, can handle millions of transactions per second.
Strike is a remittance app built on Lightning. When you send $1,000 to your family in the Philippines:
- Your $1,000 USD is instantly converted to Bitcoin at the current market rate.
- That Bitcoin moves over the Lightning Network to a node in the Philippines.
- It's instantly converted to Philippine Pesos and deposited to your recipient's bank or kept in their Strike wallet as PHP.
The whole sequence happens in 1-3 seconds. Both conversions happen at the live market rate. Neither you nor your recipient is exposed to Bitcoin's price volatility — Bitcoin only exists for the millisecond it's in transit.
Why this is cheaper than Wise or Remitly
Traditional remittance providers move money through bank correspondent networks, which are slow and have built-in fees. Even Wise, which has built its own internal banking infrastructure, has to absorb FX conversion costs and pay correspondent banks for last-mile delivery.
Strike uses Bitcoin as the “middleware” — the temporary value carrier between USD and the recipient's currency. Bitcoin doesn't need correspondent banks. It doesn't care about timezones, settlement windows, or banking holidays. Sending $1,000 of Bitcoin from New York to Manila over Lightning costs about a penny in network fees.
The savings show up as: $0 in transfer fees on most Strike transfers, with a 0.2-0.4% spread on the FX conversion. Compare to Remitly: $4.99 transfer fee + 1-1.5% spread.
Where Strike works (as of May 2026)
Strike's corridor coverage has been expanding. Current supported corridors:
- USA → El Salvador — first corridor, fully mature. Many Salvadoran-American families use Strike as their default.
- USA → Mexico — supported via SPEI deposit on the Mexican side.
- USA → Philippines — supported via direct deposit to major Philippine banks (BPI, BDO, Metrobank, GCash, PayMaya).
- USA → Argentina — supported, often outperforms traditional providers due to Argentina's currency controls.
- USA → Colombia, Peru, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria — supported with varying maturity.
- Europe → USA / Africa — limited corridors via Strike Europe.
Notable absence: India is not yet supported. RBI regulations make USD → INR via Bitcoin Lightning complex. Don't expect Strike India before 2027 at the earliest. For India, use Wise or Aspora.
What it looks like for the sender
Download the Strike app (App Store or Google Play). Sign up with email + phone. KYC takes 5-10 minutes — driver's license or passport plus selfie.
Link your US bank account. ACH transfers in are free and take 1-2 business days. Wire transfers in are instant. Debit-card top-ups are instant but have a 2% fee — use ACH for non-urgent setup.
Send money: Pay → enter recipient's phone or Strike username → enter USD amount → confirm. Recipient receives in seconds.
What it looks like for the recipient
Two options:
Option A: Strike app on the recipient's side. They install Strike, sign up with their local phone number, link their local bank account. You send to their phone number. They can hold the value in their local currency (PHP, MXN, etc.) inside Strike, or withdraw to their bank when they want.
Option B: Direct bank deposit (no Strike app for recipient). When you send, you specify the recipient's bank account directly. The funds land in their bank account in their local currency. They never need to install anything or know what crypto is.
Option B is the killer feature. Most recipients prefer to receive money the way they always have — directly into their bank account. Strike makes the crypto layer invisible to them.
The real comparison: $500 to Philippines
| Provider | Fee | FX markup | Total cost | Speed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Strike | $0.00 | ~0.3% | ~$1.50 | Seconds |
| Wise | $4.20 | ~0.5% | ~$6.70 | ~1 day |
| Remitly Express | $4.99 | ~1.2% | ~$10.99 | Minutes |
| Western Union | $8.99 | ~2.5% | ~$21.49 | Minutes |
On a $500 transfer, Strike saves about $5 vs Wise and $20 vs Western Union. On a $5,000 transfer, the savings scale to $25 vs Wise and $130 vs Western Union.
The catches we'd flag
The recipient's bank must support Lightning-to-fiat conversion
Strike has relationships with specific banks and payment networks in each country. In Philippines, that's BPI, BDO, Metrobank, GCash, and PayMaya. If your recipient banks with a small rural credit union, you may need to use one of these as a pass-through, or have them install the Strike app and withdraw later.
KYC limits
Standard Strike accounts have a $1,000/day and $10,000/year transfer limit. Higher limits available with extended verification (additional ID documents, proof of income). For most family remittance use cases, the standard limit is plenty.
Network congestion (rare)
Lightning Network nodes occasionally have liquidity issues — meaning a specific route from sender to recipient is temporarily unavailable. Strike automatically routes around this. In practice, transfer failures are rare (~0.1% based on Strike's public reliability data) and the failed transfer's funds return to the sender's Strike wallet instantly.
Bitcoin price volatility (mostly hidden)
Bitcoin's price can move 1-3% in a few minutes. But because Strike converts USD to BTC to local currency in a single atomic transaction (all three legs happen near-simultaneously), neither party is exposed to that volatility. The price you're quoted is the price you get. If Bitcoin spikes 10% during the seconds your transfer is in flight, Strike absorbs it.
That said: do not hold Bitcoin in your Strike wallet for long periods. Strike isn't a Bitcoin investment platform. Use it as a transfer rail — money in, immediate conversion, money out.
When to use Strike vs the USDC route
Both Strike and the Coinbase + Bitso USDC route are dramatically cheaper than traditional remittance. They differ in two ways:
- Strike is simpler. One app, no wallet management, no choosing networks, no test transfers. If your recipient is non-technical, Strike is much easier.
- USDC is more flexible. USDC lets your recipient hold dollars (not local currency) if they want. Useful in countries with currency instability. Strike does not — it converts to local currency on arrival.
For most users in Strike-supported corridors (especially Philippines, Mexico, El Salvador), Strike is the default recommendation. For users in non-Strike corridors or who want USD-denominated holdings on the recipient side, USDC + local exchange is the alternative.
The bigger picture
Strike isn't a crypto product pretending to be a remittance app. It's a remittance app that happens to use crypto rails because they're cheaper and faster. The same way Stripe doesn't advertise itself as “a database product” even though databases are central to how it works.
For the senders we talk to — Filipino-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Salvadoran-Americans — Strike has become the new normal for everyday family transfers. The savings are real, the UX is dead simple, and the experience is faster than any traditional alternative.
Try it
Download Strike and send a $10 test transfer to a family member. If the corridor is supported, you'll see how fast and cheap it is. Sign up takes 10 minutes including KYC. The first transfer takes about 30 seconds end to end.