Lightning has been set free from the Bitcoin Jungle to the Sea!

Welcome to the jungle — the Bitcoin Jungle.

Bitcoin Jungle in Uvita is an example of a Bitcoin circular economy. It has over 600 merchants who accept Bitcoin. The place is also known as Francis Pouliot Has called home the last three years.

And the Canadian expat and founder of Bull Bitcoin wants other Bitcoiner expats who visit the region, and Costa Rica at large, to feel how he feels in the country — welcomed.

He and his team created an app for this purpose, which works within the Bitcoin Jungle wallet (an open-source, custodial Lightning Wallet) and with other Lightning Wallets.

Bitcoin users can use the Lightning web interface to pay with Bitcoin for nearly anything, whether or not the retailer accepts the currency.

Use the Bitcoin Jungle app or the web app directly, users can pay with bitcoin and have their bill settled in the local fiat currency, colónes, over the country’s national electronic payment system, SINPE (Sistema Nacional de Pagos Electrónicos). It is the same as how Strike Bitcoin, Bringin Bitcoin, and Bull Bitcoin enable users to use Lightning to settle their fiat bills through United States’ ACH System, Europe SEPA System, and Canada Interac.

It is easy to join the digital economy of Costa Rica, even if you aren’t a Costa Rican resident (you have to be one to create a SINPE).

“This allows people to live exclusively off of bitcoin,” Pouliot tells Bitcoin Magazine. “Every merchant that accepts fiat payments over SINPE in Costa Rica can now accept payments from a Bitcoiner.”

Bull Bitcoin Costa Rica App: How it Works

The Bull Bitcoin app is used in Costa Rica by users who make a payment via a Lightning Bull Bitcoin node. Bull Bitcoin then makes the payment on behalf of the user via SINPE.

Bull Bitcoin processes hundreds of payments like this every day in Costa Rica. Bull Bitcoin has processed 32 774 bitcoin to fiat conversions between May 2024 and May 2025.

Pouliot is proud to make sure that the Bull Bitcoin app web application, which he uses himself, has the same reliability as a standard credit card. He knows how many people in Canada, including himself, rely on the Bull Bitcoin Web App every day.

“If you’re at the gas station in Costa Rica and you don’t have a credit card and you just filled up your car, you need that Lightning-to-SINPE payment to work because otherwise you’re screwed,” Pouliot explained

“This is how a lot of us live here. We don’t use credit cards. We don’t have cash. So, if I go to the gas station, this app better fucking work. Otherwise, I just filled up my car and I have a very angry gas station attendant,” He also added.

“The success rate is well over 99% — almost 100%. I don’t even remember any Lightning payments failing. And that’s because the Bull Bitcoin is managed by hardcore Bitcoiners that know how to navigate Lightning Network liquidity.”

Pouliot noted that it’s not running the Lightning Node or connecting the Banking API which is the biggest challenge to keeping the app working properly. Instead, he said the biggest challenge is sourcing the fiat liquidity in a not-so-widely-accepted fiat currency like the colón.

“There is no international open marketplace for very low-liquidity fiat currencies and bitcoin,” Pouliot explained

“Neither Kraken nor Binance or Coinbase list the colón — there’s no bitcoin-to-colónes order book. We need to sell that bitcoin to someone else to get the fiat in order to pay out the fiat merchant,” He also added.

Pouliot explained that, because major bitcoin and crypto exchanges don’t list the colón, he essentially sets the exchange rate for it by constructing what he calls a “virtual bitcoin-to-colón exchange rate.” To calculate this rate, Pouliot factors in the colón-to-U.S. dollar rate and the USD-to-bitcoin rate and then adds a 1% gross margin rate to help Bull Bitcoin not lose money on the exchange rate while still keeping the product accessible to users.

He emphasized that maintaining liquidity was the greatest challenge of the process.

“Whenever you see a group of people that have achieved this seamless flow, know that while it sounds so simple, it can be very complicated on the back end”, said Pouliot. “That’s why, for example, I find Tando so impressive.”

Kenyan Tando

Kenya’s Bull Bitcoin version is not a web application, but rather a full-fledged app. The team behind Tando, however, was inspired by the work done in Costa Rica.

“The Bitcoin Jungle team posted a video on their X where they went into a gas station and spent bitcoin while the merchant received the local currency,” Bitcoin Magazine spoke to Jason, a co-founder of Tando. 

“I was like, ‘That’s pretty cool.’ We thought that would probably work here if Safaricom [a Kenyan mobile network operator] has an API,” He also added.

“And with just a little research, we figured out that ‘Yeah, we can do this.'”

Jason with his cofounder. Sabina WaithiraThe app was launched in July 2024. It allows Kenyan users the ability to settle their bills with Kenyan Shillings using M-PESA. Safaricom assisted in the launch of M-PESA. M-PESA is an African mobile money service that works in over half a dozen countries.

Tando lets users pay their bills, purchase goods and send Kenyan Shillings using just a Lightning wallet, the phone number of the recipient and other information. M-PESA requires only a recipient’s phone number to send money.

Tando Lightning Node accepts bitcoin sent by the Lightning wallet, Tando pays the M-PESA fiat bill to the sender.

This all happens in a matter of seconds.

Tando was my first choice when I visited Kenya in 2024 for the African Bitcoin Conference.

Tando allowed me to pay for taxis and restaurants in Kenya using M-PESA. I would not have been able do this if I hadn’t had the time to open an M-PESA and load it up with Kenyan Shillings. Tando made it easier for me to use bitcoin in the local economy as a visitor. It doesn’t even require that I sign up.

Kenyans are now able to spend Bitcoins easier

Waithira didn’t know what the situation was with Costa Rican Lightning-to-fiat Payments before Jason brought this to her attention.

Her own experiences of spending bitcoins in Kenya inspired her to create Tando.

“I used to work for Bitcoin Dada [a virtual Bitcoin education platform and sisterhood for African women] and would sometimes get paid in bitcoin”Waithira said Bitcoin Magazine. “It was hard to spend that Bitcoin directly.”

Waithira spent her bitcoin in creative ways, such as tipping the waiters at restaurants. But she was asked by those workers, “What do you mean?” “How can I spend this bitcoin?”

“We didn’t have a great answer to this question”Waithira replied. “So, this is also what inspired Tando.”

Waithira said that “Kenyans are very fast learners and very curious”Jason said that Kenyans are ready for Bitcoin because they have already experienced the mobile revolution through M-PESA in the last decade-and-a-half.

Waithira also noted that she and Jason have aimed to make Tando as easy to use as M-PESA is — to not scare users off with a complicated interface.

“We wanted to mimic the experience of using M-Pesa”Waithira explained.

“I don’t like thinking when I use apps, and I don’t think our customers do either”She added. “We kept this in mind as we designed Tando.”

Waithira, Jason and their team did something right. Tando’s popularity with Kenyans has grown slowly but steadily. The company now processes more than 100 transactions per week.

Beyond just enabling more Kenyans to live by the Bitcoin standard, this app also inspired a Ghanaian developer, who lives on the opposite side of the African continent, to build something similar for his country’s citizens.

Ghana’s BitSpenda

Bright Kportiklah attended 2024 African Bitcoin Conference, and was among many participants who used Tando in Kenya.

After the conference in Ghana, the computer programer travelled back to Kenya with the intent of creating his own version Tando.

Within a few months, Kportiklah had the beta version of a Lightning-to-fiat interface he’d created — BitSpenda — up and running. Kportiklah was helped by Bernard Parah (founder and CEO of Bitnob), a seasoned Nigerian Bitcoin Entrepreneur, who he had met during the conference.

Bitnob, a financial services provider that has been around for almost ten years, uses payment infrastructure built using Bitcoin and Lightning. Parah, the Bitnob team and Kportiklah helped Kportiklah to connect with local off-ramps across Africa. This included mobile money networks and Nigerian bank accounts as well as Kenyan and Ghanaian banks. BitSpenda serves these citizens.

“It’s very difficult to connect to these local off-ramps via API as a small fintech,” Kportiklah told Bitcoin Magazine.

“When I told Bernard at the conference that I wanted to build something similar to Tando, he gave me a contact to reach out to in Ghana,” He added.

Kportiklah was able to connect BitSpenda with Ghana’s mobile payment system through this contact.

Kportiklah said that Kgothatso Ngako of Machankura – which allows users of feature phones to send Bitcoin over Lightning – and Onionsman of Bitpension based in Nigeria, had both advised him about the project.

“I met all these people at the conference in Kenya, and they have been so instrumental in helping me build this,” Kportiklah said.

BitSpenda launched its service on March 7, this year.

A web-based app allows senders to find recipients of money by using their bank account or phone number, in Nigeria and Ghana.

A Lightning invoice, or QR code, is produced once the recipient is found and payment has been made. Almost instantly the bitcoins sent are converted to the recipient’s currency.

“Within 30 seconds, the recipient will receive the money, and the sender can see on BitSpenda whether the money was received or not,” Explain Kportiklah.

Kportiklah is able to manually pay the recipient if the transaction fails. This has occurred in less than 1 percent of transactions so far.

The app processed transactions worth thousands of dollars by the end of 2025. Kportiklah stated that this app had encouraged Ghanaians to adopt bitcoin, not only because it is perceived as a superior currency than Ghanaian Cedis (the country’s fiat money), but also for another reason.

“Ghanaians are more willing to use Bitcoin because of the value it offers in terms of finance,” Explain Kportiklah.

“For example, in Ghana, if you keep your money in your bank accounts, at the end of the month, the bank will charge fees, but this isn’t the case when people use bitcoin instead of their bank,” He also added.

“Some people also just see bitcoin as a currency that has more value as compared to the Ghanaian cedi and choose to use it for that reason.”

Kportiklah also noted that an app like BitSpenda is particularly helpful in Ghana, where outside of the Bitcoin circular economy that Kportiklah serves as the technical advisor for — Bitcoin Dua — almost no merchants accept bitcoin.

In the future, he hopes to offer his service not just to Ghanaians but Africans living in more than a dozen African countries.

“A year from now, we should be in no less than 15 African countries”, said Kportiklah.

In less than four months, BitSpenda was launched in three different countries.

Kportiklah has said that he will be completing all the required paperwork in order to provide BitSpenda services to those members who live in the other 12 countries.

He’ll have to hurry, though, given that the team from Tando is looking to expand into Uganda soon and that a new web app built by a Senegalese developer — Banxaas — now enables bitcoin-to-fiat payments in Senegal, as well.

It’s A Labor Of Love

Irony is the best way to describe what Pouliot Waithira Jason and Kportiklah created. Making money is less important than making them. Bitcoin money.

“This is not a profitable endeavor”Pouliot sneered at Bull’s Bitcoin Costa Rica website app.

“Actually, this has a very high cost for us — it’s very complicated and there’s a lot of overhead. So, it’s done with the mindset of ‘Sure, maybe one day it’s going to be profitable,’ but we do this more to be part of the Bitcoin Jungle mission of maintaining infrastructure to facilitate Lightning”Added he. 

“Not to say that it will never be a profitable business. I actually encourage people to consider that to be a potentially profitable business. But at scale, it’s really hard to pull off.”

Tando or Kportiklah founders have not yet figured out the best way to make money.

“Our business model is we get bitcoin”Jason said half-jokingly.

He said that Waithira and he have received a lot of requests from other wallets that want to utilize their Safaricom API. They’re now considering charging these wallets a fee to make this happen. It doesn’t appear to be a top priority, but rather getting Kenyans interested in bitcoins as an exchange medium.

Kportiklah shares the same opinion:

“The goal for now is just to create a tool that will help people to spend Bitcoin with ease”He said.

Pouliot stressed at the conclusion of the interview how it’s important to remember that Bitcoiners are working hard to achieve the desired results. “with ease” Part, pointing out that these initiatives are better created and managed locally by people who understand the financial system they interact with.

“These products are better built as grassroots projects, because they require knowledge of the banking system on the ground”Pouliot explained.

“This is why we don’t have that many expansion plans, but I’m happy to support the other local initiatives with technology and advice”He added that what NostrPIX is doing, another Lightning to Fiat Payment App, in Brazil, was cool.

Then he offered praise to his international colleagues for successfully managing and building such interfaces.

“Whenever you see a local group of Bitcoiners pulling it off, be sure that they are fucking awesome and that it wasn’t easy to do.”

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