In a world where traditional finance often feels slow, costly, and out of touch, three New Zealanders are pioneering a bitcoin-powered revolution—right from the heart of Aotearoa. Meet Simon Collins and the team behind Lightning Pay NZ, the homegrown startup shaking up how Kiwis save, spend, and interact with money.
From the peaks of Queenstown to Auckland’s urban sprawl, Simon and co-founders Brandon Bucher and Rob Clarkson—a trio of engineers, entrepreneurs, and bitcoin true-believers—are bridging the gap between fiat and the Lightning Network. Their secret? A frictionless exchange that slashes costs, speeds up settlements, and empowers everyday Kiwis to reclaim their financial sovereignty.
Simon Collins pulls back the curtain on building a bitcoin-only ecosystem in a “digital asset”-skeptic world, navigating regulations without compromise, and why Lightning Network isn’t just a tool—it’s a lifeline for a nation tired of being nickel-and-dimed. Discover how three Kiwis are turning New Zealand into a global beacon for bitcoin innovation, one satoshi at a time. 
Intro
- Can you share a bit about your background and what inspired you to get involved in bitcoin and financial literacy?
We all come from pretty diverse backgrounds. Brandon Bucher is a long time product executive with an engineering and tech background. Rob Clarkson has been a developer in Queenstown, running his own software company for a decade or more.
I (Simon Collins) have been an entrepreneur for some time. Ultimately our trajectory from working in other areas into bitcoin was really similar. We were all long-time bitcoiners, and through becoming increasingly engaged with the community and ecosystem we all eventually realised that we just couldn’t work in any other area other than bitcoin any longer.
It’s not just the financial opportunity it offers but the calling to work on something that is this important and world changing.
Lightning Pay NZ: Building on Bitcoin
- What personal or professional experiences drove you to build Lightning Pay NZ?
The three of us were fairly frustrated by the services we had available to us in New Zealand. Really there were only very large international exchanges, a crypto-brokerage type business, and a handful of Australian exchanges that could service New Zealand.
In all cases bitcoin was just part of a bundle of tokens they offered and as such, they were also spreading the kind of bitcoin = crypto narrative. Secondly, the cost of getting into bitcoin from dollars was painfully expensive and slow. Forget about even getting out of bitcoin if you needed to pay a bill or something.
While New Zealand is a pretty small market, we could see that it was growing, like anywhere in the world in adoption. So there was definitely room for a bitcoin only exchange that improved the experience of entering and exiting the bitcoin ecosystem.
- What gaps in New Zealand’s financial ecosystem does Lightning Pay NZ address through bitcoin’s Lightning Network?
I think, like above, there was a massive missing piece in New Zealand’s on and off ramping experience for bitcoiners. Before Lightning Pay you were stuck with being lumped into the crypto bucket at these alt-coin casino type exchanges. We really wanted a bitcoin only experience that was by bitcoiners, for bitcoiners.
We do something that as far as we can tell is unique in the world. We offer what is effectively an Open Banking/Lightning Network bridge. Our exchange uses API based banking, our customers can quickly and seamlessly move between ecosystems in a way that because both sides of the exchange settle instantly, means faster, more useful swaps for dollars to bitcoin and back.
There’s no temporal penalty to holding bitcoin (you can have dollars instantly if you want) our customers tend to save more in bitcoin than they would otherwise.
The other thing that we offer which solves an issue in New Zealand is merchant services. So in NZ, we pay the highest indexed merchant service fees in the world. A contactless credit card transaction will cost anywhere from 1.8 – 2.5% of the total transaction value.
With Lightning Pay, a vendor can take bitcoin over the counter for free, and get either bitcoin, or NZD settled within 24 hours. Instead of up to 10 working days like from traditional networks.
- What made you choose the Lightning Network over other blockchain solutions for payments?
I think first it’s important to say that we’re a bitcoin only company, because we’re solving for money and putting the best kind of money in peoples hands. The base layer is an amazing protocol but of course it’s slow, and can get expensive.
What we love about Lightning is that it lets people stack a reasonable amount of bitcoin by buying frequently and then sending it on chain when they can keep their costs low, and avoid a bunch of UTXOs down the line when they spend their on chain balance.
We’re also watching the next generation of technologies that are being built on top of Lightning – ecash, nostr, Bolt12 transactions. It’s just so exciting and moving so fast.
- Walk us through your core product(s)—wallets, APIs, merchant tools?
Really for us the core of the product range is our exchange. Like we outlined above, we have this Open Banking to Lightning Network Bridge and because the banking settlement is instant, and the Lightning Network is instant, there’s no waiting to settle.
Unlike credit card onramping which is also fast but comes at a huge cost in percentage terms, it’s also incredibly cheap. So our customers get more sats, faster.
Our merchant services app is a way for Kiwi businesses to easily take bitcoin. But if they don’t want exposure to the volatility they can get dollars in their bank account just like a regular point of sale system.
So it means for these merchants there’s no downside to taking bitcoin. It opens up a new market of customers, and a new way of saving money on their overheads like merchant service fees.
- What workshops, content, or tools do you provide to demystify bitcoin/LN?
We have to work hard to get people to make the move from on chain to Lightning Network. So we have a great, and still growing, knowledge base on our site called Lightning Pay Learn.
It’s full of articles and guides that we’ve developed in-house. Which wallets to use, how to minimise your UTXOs, tax issues and more. We have to say, we don’t find our customers need all that much help – they’re pretty clued in!
- What KPIs (e.g., transaction volume, user growth) are you most proud of?
We’re really proud of lots of what we’ve achieved in terms of growth. Transaction volume is definitely one that we track the most, adding new users as well. The one that I think we’re most proud of is that after 1 year of running our Lightning bitcoin exchange, our average Kiwi bitcoiner is 50.03% wealthier (in dollar terms) from the bitcoin that they have bought through us.
We think this is such a great example of how bitcoin is better for savings than either saving in FIAT or in investments like shares. Investments aren’t liquid, they’re not really savings, and neither is FIAT because it’s a melting ice cube. So our ability to give people a way to store, and improve their purchasing power is the best metric of our success that we could ask for!
- Lightning Pay NZ won Web3NZ Startup of the Year 2024—a huge milestone! How does this align with your mission to “unlock financial potential” for Kiwis?
The best thing about that award from our perspective is that it was given to us based on the results of a community vote. So what we take from that is that we’re delivering something that people really love.
That’s entirely our mission – stay focused on what people want and need to live closer to and eventually entirely on a bitcoin standard.
- How do you navigate New Zealand’s evolving bitcoin regulations?
Carefully! Regulation is actually a significant driver of how we initially shaped the product. The non-custodial model is much easier to get across the line with regulators than custodial, especially in the aftermath of some pretty high profile exchange failures over recent years (I’m looking at you Cryptopia).
New regulations come in occasionally and we need to be sure we’re adhering to them. We love operating a bitcoin exchange and helping people save in bitcoin, but we also aren’t keen to go to jail for someone’s sats! So we’re very much a by the book operation which is better for everyone.
- What frameworks do you follow to operate across borders?
Legal frameworks? We’re really only focused on the New Zealand market at the moment so we don’t need to worry about the regulations in other markets. We have international plans for the future so we are monitoring how things are changing around the world.
Overcoming Challenges & Community Feedback
- What were the biggest hurdles in integrating LN for New Zealand users?
For us, education is the biggest challenge. Not all wallets have good, or often any Lightning Support so we sometimes have to coach people to a wallet that suits where they are in their bitcoin, and Lightning journey. This means that even though products like Wallet of Satoshi are custodial, they’re really easy to use, and so we may suggest that someone start there.
This and other issues like it are sort of symptomatic of the fact that New Zealand wasn’t well connected to Lightning Network until we started. The rest of the world has Strike, Relai, Osmo, Pouch, and others. In this part of the world there really was no other solutions getting Lightning bitcoin into peoples hands.
So we have had to pick up and do a good job of educating people of the differences, and in particular the amazing benefits of using Lightning Network to stack, save, and spend bitcoin.
- Was there a “make or break” moment for Lightning Pay NZ, and how did you overcome it?
The one moment I think about was when we came to a very key realisation of just how good our exchange technology is. We were really focused on the merchant piece at the start of the business and we were finding it really hard to find traction. The exchange was sort of under the hood.
People could use it to buy and sell bitcoin, but it was built because it was what allowed us to give merchants NZD if that’s what they were after. So many of our customers were telling us how good the exchange was and when we decided to change our focus to that, this is when we saw the growth we are seeing now.
- Which trends (e.g., AI integration, CBDCs) excite or worry you?
We love AI and use it every day. We also think that Lightning Network is the perfect way for AIs to make payments. Let’s face it, who is going to give an AI agent a bank account? So the future of AI and its ability to learn, or conduct tasks would be massively enabled by its ability to use the Lightning Network to settle its own payments.
CDBCs are the boogie man of course. We also think that by the time central banks manage to get them stood up people will have moved to bitcoin. Really they just move the problems with FIAT to more digital native rails.
We think that the ability of Central Banks to impose interest rates on people’s saved funds massively exacerbates the drivers of inflation by removing competition from banks on rates on savings. So CDBCs surely just speed the inevitable demise of the FIAT system?
- What’s a quirky detail about Lightning Pay NZ most people don’t know?
We wear our quirks on our sleeves! The most interesting thing about us is how boring and processual we all are.
- Which NZ-based projects inspire you?
We love the Bitkiwi guys for their consistency and dedication to bringing bitcoin meetups to as many New Zealanders as possible. The Bitkiwi meetups move around the country 4 times a year to Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Queenstown.
So that as many New Zealanders as possible can attend and get the benefit of the community, speakers, and signal that in person meetups can offer.
The other great project in NZ is bitcoin Journey. Francisco is an amazing bitcoin educator who has moved from being a well paid, and successful lawyer to teaching people about bitcoin, self custody and bitcoin best practices. It’s a selfless and impactful job he’s doing and so important to developing knowledge in the community.
What’s Next?
- Where do you see Lightning Pay NZ in the global Bitcoin/LN ecosystem in the next 5 years?
We think that banking-like services will move to Lightning Network. In 5 years so much of what people do at banks, or what banks provide will be on Lightning in a permissionless way. The one thing we know is that we won’t be running a bitcoin exchange – because there’s nothing to exchange to or from except bitcoin!
- Why should every Kiwi join Lightning Pay NZ’s community today? How can the bitcoin community support your vision?
We really have the best exchange you’ve ever used. Straight from your bank to bitcoin in the same time that it would take to make a contactless transaction at a shop. We’re also the cheapest exchange in the country as well at a 1% fixed fee commission. No spreads or hidden fees.
Our community can support us by choosing us over other services. Also by checking out some of the unique services we’ve got – like our bill pay feature that lets you pay any NZ bill using bitcoin. Also by telling their friends, family and just anyone you meet that there’s better money and it’s in New Zealand now. And it’s bitcoin.
