Banks are under pressure. The legacy infrastructure powering cross-border payments is expensive, slow, and inflexible. Settlement delays, intermediary bank fees, and lack of transparency are no longer tolerable in an always-on digital economy. Fintech firms have developed more efficient systems, but without banking licenses or direct access to payment networks, they can’t fully scale. This creates a powerful incentive for new bank and fintech partnership models, especially those that deliver real-time, global payments.
The evolution of bank-fintech partnerships
Bank-fintech collaboration has matured beyond superficial integrations. Over the past decade, we’ve seen multiple structural approaches:
- Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS): Banks expose APIs that let fintechs build products on top of core infrastructure.
- Embedded Finance: Payment and lending services are integrated directly into non-financial platforms.
- Referral and Reseller Models: Fintechs onboard users while banks manage the regulated side of operations.
- White-Label Partnerships: Fintechs power digital experiences under the bank’s brand.
While these models offer speed to market, they often create friction around compliance alignment, product control, and customer experience. The next generation of partnerships requires tighter technical and operational integration, especially for regulated, high-volume use cases like global payments.
Introducing Lightning-as-a-Service (LaaS)
Lightning-as-a-Service is a new partnership model designed specifically for banks and fintechs looking to enable instant, low-cost global payments. It combines:
- The scalability of Bitcoin’s Lightning Network
- Lightspark’s secure, enterprise-grade infrastructure layer
- Built-in compliance and liquidity support
This model embeds the core benefits of a decentralized payments network into existing financial operations, without sacrificing compliance or control.
How LaaS works
LaaS abstracts the complexity of operating on the Lightning Network. Here’s what you get:
- Global payment network access: Tap into the "Money Grid," our Bitcoin-native infrastructure, which routes payments through the fastest, lowest-cost path to final settlement.
- Liquidity orchestration: We manage inbound/outbound liquidity, ensuring payments can be routed without capital lockup or rebalancing delays.
- Compliance rails: Our tools integrate KYC, AML, and sanction screening directly into transaction workflows.
- Modern APIs: RESTful endpoints with high reliability, fast response times, and full developer support.
- 24/7 technical operations: We manage node infrastructure, channel health, routing optimizations, and uptime guarantees.
You focus on customer experience and compliance policy, we handle the pipes.
Benefits for banks and fintechs
LaaS unlocks new value across both operational efficiency and strategic opportunity:
Operational benefits
- Instant settlement: Eliminate payment delays, reduce float, and minimize counterparty risk.
- Cost savings: Bypass legacy correspondent banking fees, especially valuable in high-volume corridors.
- Always-on infrastructure: Lightning operates continuously, with no cutoff windows.
- No crypto expertise required: We abstract the complexity so your teams don’t need to manage wallets, keys, or channels.
Strategic advantages
- Faster corridor expansion: Launch payments in new countries without building new local banking relationships.
- Competitive differentiation: Offer real-time, transparent payments where others rely on 2-5 day settlement windows.
- Compliance-first design: All components are auditable, traceable, and built to align with evolving regulatory requirements.
Implementation considerations
While LaaS simplifies the technical side of real-time payments, thoughtful integration and oversight still matter.
Risk and compliance
- Counterparty risk: Assess LaaS provider stability, uptime history, and security posture.
- Technology risk: Review SLAs, data protection standards, and resilience frameworks.
- Regulatory fit: Map services to local requirements in each jurisdiction you operate.
Governance and controls
- Clear delineation: Define who owns onboarding, transaction monitoring, and escalation protocols.
- Performance SLAs: Agree on metrics for uptime, routing success, and resolution timelines.
- Auditability: Ensure all actions are logged and accessible for regulator review.
Integration planning
- API architecture: Map LaaS endpoints to your internal payment systems.
- User experience: Design payment flows that clearly explain final settlement times and costs.
- Phased rollout: Start with specific corridors or customer types to validate performance.
Real-world use cases
Banks and fintechs are already deploying LaaS in production environments to solve specific payment pain points:
Cross-border remittances
A regional bank connects to Lightspark’s LaaS stack to power low-cost remittances from the U.S. to Latin America. Payments that once took 2–3 days now settle in seconds, with lower fees and full transparency.
B2B global payments
A fintech serving SMBs uses LaaS to provide instant vendor payments across Asia and Europe. Settlement delays are eliminated, improving supplier cash flow and reducing reconciliation time.
Stablecoin interoperability
By leveraging Lightning's infrastructure, LaaS can enable atomic swaps between Bitcoin and stablecoins—allowing for seamless fiat-like experiences even across crypto rails.
What makes LaaS different from other bank and fintech partnership models?
Most existing models fall into one of two traps:
- They don’t scale globally. Traditional embedded finance or BaaS setups are confined to specific markets.
- They struggle with real-time settlement. Even fast domestic systems like FedNow can’t handle global payments.
LaaS solves both. It’s natively global, leverages decentralized infrastructure, and settles in seconds.
And unlike most fintech partnerships, it’s built around shared responsibility:
- You control compliance, onboarding, and the customer relationship.
- We deliver a global payment infrastructure that works 24/7.
Regulatory alignment matters more than ever
With growing regulatory focus on bank-fintech partnerships, compliance becomes a design principle. Our infrastructure is:
- Built to meet regulatory expectations for traceability and record retention
- Auditable, with full visibility into transaction paths and counterparties
- Integrated with AML screening and sanction list enforcement
Banks working with Lightspark can show regulators that LaaS is a robust, compliant foundation for global payments.
The road ahead: where LaaS is going
As the Lightning Network matures, LaaS is evolving into a more versatile toolkit:
- Smart routing optimization: Intelligent pathfinding for faster, lower-cost settlements
- Programmable payments: Support for smart contracts that enable escrow, time locks, and other business logic
- Stablecoin integrations: Secure interoperability with tokenized assets for programmable finance use cases
- Industry-specific modules: Custom templates for remittances, supplier payments, platform payouts, and more
Move at the speed of your customers
Lightning-as-a-Service rethinks how banks and fintechs can co-own the future of payments, combining regulatory trust with truly modern infrastructure.
When customers expect money to move as fast as messages, you need payment infrastructure that keeps up. With Lightspark’s LaaS, you can:
- Launch new corridors faster
- Reduce operational and FX costs
- Deliver real-time experiences your customers can trust
Ready to explore how Lightning-as-a-Service can power your next wave of innovation? Let’s talk.
