Somebody in an online business community asked how we - online business owners - pay our virtual assistants in the Phillipines.

We use virtual assistants because they speak English, work hard and are friendly. And you pay them between 5-10 usd per hour. You can have a virtual assistant who has a Bachelor in social media and graphics who would love to work for that money because it is a lot of money in the Phillipines. Somebody earning 200 dollars part time per month could be earning more than a full time teacher.

Now here is what I answered to that question. And here is why we need to push lightning payments between the West (Caribbean) and the Phillipines (East).

I paid with Paypal but said it was a friend. Then you don’t pay a lot of fees. Did this 3 years.

In the near future people in the Phillipines can pay with bitcoin. They can buy food and stuff in bitcoin.

Anybody in the Phillipines can confirm this? Is there a market in the Phillipines where you can trade Bitcoins or sats for Pesos?

You can then pay them with Lightning. That is a super fast payment network on top of Bitcoin.

There are almost no fees. I could pay you 200 dollars with Lighning and it goes to your wallet instantly, globally. And it would take maybe 0.10 dollar. That is not a typo.

I expect that people in the Phillipines are going to move from Paypal, etc and ask to be paid via Lightning.

I’m also researching how I can receive payment easily via my wordpress site by using lightning. Because that is the future of payments with low fees.

In the West maybe people and businesses do not see the value of this. But when your Ph pesos are fluctuating like crazy and you work for a Western online company you want to accept anything that doesn’t take a huge percentage like paypal from you.

In the Caribbean working with Paypal is not easy. We cannot link our banks to paypal.

So I had to transfer money to the Netherlands (Europe) bank and then send via Paypal to Phillipines.

But with Paypal I could not receive money in the Netherlands. Because my business is not located there.

I once earned 5000 USD on paypal but once I had to get it on my Dutch bank account they would not send it.

Imagine all this and doing business online or in the Phillipines and you understand why we here want to leave paypal and move to bitcoin payments and lightning!!!

It will open business for us.

Ask your VA if they can accept Lightning bitcoin payments. There is an app called Strike and it uses bitcoin and lightning and you deposit USD and the other side receives money in their own currency. And the fees are low.