Coinbase has partnered with Lightspark for Bitcoin Lightning Payments.

Coinbase is one step closer to integrating Bitcoin Lightning into its platform amid a new partnership with Lightspark, an enterprise-focused lightning solution led by former PayPal president David Marcus.

In an April 4 X post, Coinbase's CEO Brian Armstrong said the integration of the Bitcoin Layer-2 network will be “soon” — allowing its 108 million user base to use faster and cheaper Bitcoin transactions.

“Illuminating all Coinbase touch points with lightning” will offload more transaction activity to Bitcoin's second layer, which will combat recent fee increases in Bitcoin's base layer, Lightspark explained in an April 3 post.

Armstrong confirmed last September that Coinbase would integrate Bitcoin with Lightning, but did not provide further details on how or when it would happen.

Cointelegraph reached out to Coinbase but did not receive an immediate response.

In the year Founded in 2022, much of Lightspark's effort is focused on removing the complexities that come with implementing and managing a Lightning node to securely send and receive transactions.

The firm has built Lightspark Predict – an AI-based smart engine that plans to optimize liquidity requirements and routing in real-time to maximize transaction success rates and completion times.

According to Bitcoin financial services firm River, Lightning's payment success rate is around 99.7%, measured from 308,000 Lightning transactions requested on the platform last October.

Related: Bitcoin Lightning Network is growing, but 3 major challenges remain

The main reason for the decline was the lack of sufficient payment methods to facilitate the transfer, but River's average lightning transaction volume was 44,700 satoshi, or $11.84.

The firm estimated 279,000 to 1.1 million Lightning users in September.

Coinbase's biggest competitor, Binance, integrated Bitcoin Lighting last July.

Lightning has become a payment method in Lugano, Switzerland, El Zonte in El Salvador – known as “Bitcoin Beach” and in Utiva in Costa Rica, known as “Bitcoin Jungle”.

However, Bitcoin bull Michael Saylor and some other industry experts believe that Bitcoin is much better as a technology store of value than as an exchange.

Big questions: How can Bitcoin payments generate returns?