Kroger, which is the largest retail stores chain in the US in terms of revenue and the third largest employer in the whole world, announced that its Smith’s grocery and drug stores would no longer accept Visa cards as a means of payment. The Smith’s store chain includes 134 food shops and pharmacies in 7 states of the country with 20 thousand employees. The refusal from Visa cards followed after the similar decision taken by Foods Co. Supermarkets in the state of California last year. As stated by the Chief Financial Officer of the company, Mike Schlotman, the reason for such a decision was the following: “Visa has been misusing its position and charging retailers excessive fees for a long time.” How can Lightning Network help? Given the fact that all the news is quickly shared online, there soon appeared people suggesting alternative ideas to Kroger, and one of the was Anthony Pompliano, the founder of Morgan Creek Digital. He offered help with solving this issue using Bitcoin’s Lightning Network. Grocery store @kroger is stopping acceptance of @Visa in over 250 stores because of network fees. Who knows someone on the leadership team there? The Morgan Creek Digital team will fly to meet them and get them hooked up with the Lightning Network nationwide. 🔥🙏🏽 — Pomp 🌪 (@APompliano) March 2, 2019 A few hours later, Pompliano was contacted by an employee of Kroger in the comments to his tweet, who offered to start a dialogue regarding the issue. Hey Pomp – I'm a Product Manager at Kroger Digital. Can confirm that Yael is the correct person to discuss this with. I would love to set up a conversation. — Nick (@sophicNick) March 2, 2019 What does Ripple have to do with this? The supporters of the Ripple technology obviously did not take the news quite enthusiastically. They claimed that the Lightning Network was not ready to handle such a giant as Kroger and it still needed technological improvements. Meanwhile, in their opinion, the blockchain of Ripple was a perfect payment solution to replace Visa and its pricey commissions. The battle between the fans of Lightning Network and Ripple has been going on for as much as both technologies exist, although both of them get their share of recognition, being implemented in various businesses all over the world. In response to that, Anthony Pompliano said that he was going to consider Ripple as well, since he was open to all arguments. Subscribe to The Coin Shark news in Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/coinshark/