This was originally posted on Breez's Medium by @roy

Reimagining what’s already there is hard. Changing people’s fundamental beliefs as well as societal norms and structures is a challenge. But that’s how we progress. At Breez, we’ve built our free and open-source SDK on the belief that there’s an unimagined future of payments, with the potential to unlock trillions of dollars of value in a completely new economy, all powered by Bitcoin. We think big.

Yopaki is another example of a company that thinks big. They aren’t just building another banking app — anyone can do that — they want to reimagine the experience from the money you use to the way you interact with the app.

In Mexico, where Yopaki co-founders Francisco and Carlos are from, fragmented banking and fintech options with limited features and utility leave users frustrated. So Yopaki decided to change things by building an app that covers the full range of financial tools infused with Mexican culture and traditions as an integral part of the experience. And with the Breez SDK, they’ve seamlessly integrated these traditions with Lightning, creating an experience as rich in culture as it is in convenience.

Yopaki was born out of two core problems. The first was that modern banking often feels soulless, uniform, and disconnected from the vibrant cultures it operates in. Yopaki’s answer was to bring cultural richness into the digital experience, and to do that they’ve started with their own heritage.

While Francisco and Carlos are citizens of the world, their connection to Mexican culture runs deep — “Yopaki” is a portmanteau and roughly translates to “the pursuit of happiness” in Nahuatl, an ancient Aztec language. This blend of tradition and innovation extends to the user experience, where they invite users to engage with the rich history of Mexico through Lotería — a traditional game, akin to picture-based bingo, passed down through generations. Yopaki has transformed this cultural staple into an interactive, daily feature in the app, changing how users interact with financial products.

The second, larger, problem to solve was that money itself is broken. Traditional banking does offer valuable services like lending and saving, but it operates with a fiat currency that’s centralized, slow, and controlled. Enter Bitcoin: no centralized agency, no borders to overcome, no third-party control.

Together, these solutions combine to reimagine the UX of banking from the daily interactions with the app to the decentralized currency that underpins it.

It goes without saying, in reimagining banking, that bitcoin is central to Yopaki’s mission. It redefines how money moves and how people hold it, taking power away from third parties and returning it to the people. The problem is that its UX isn’t always intuitive, especially for daily payments, which is why more people are turning to Lightning. But Lightning brings its own complexities, especially with self-custody, making integration from scratch nearly impossible. That’s where Breez comes in.

With the Breez SDK’s nodeless implementation, Yopaki avoided Lightning’s complexities, such as managing a node, channels, and liquidity, while retaining the sovereignty and simplicity of bitcoin. The result is a seamless, fiat-beating experience where users effortlessly make bitcoin payments quickly and affordably. It’s a vast improvement over traditional banking, all while being self-custodial, borderless, and permissionless.

The Breez SDK also dramatically simplifies things for developers. As Carlos put it, it’s practically self-explanatory. Yopaki was able to implement it in about 48 hours, thanks to the simple API calls, which not only freed the team to perfect other features in the app but also reduced engineering costs. And if any questions came up, the Breez team was there with answers. With well-documented, open-source code, every feature is transparent and traceable, making setup as straightforward as it gets — all while being free to use.

And the payoff? Very happy users, saying adios to traditional banking products. Francisco saw it firsthand when he sent his mother-in-law her first sats to self-custody, and everything clicked. She immediately texted him, convinced that everyone should have control over their own money. This is what a killer UX can do; it’s the most effective “orange pill”. Enough users have had similar lightbulb moments that Yopaki has already expanded to 29 countries since launch.

Yopaki is a great example of what happens when a big idea meets seamless execution through shared vision and cooperation. Collaboration, after all, drives progress — not just in technology, but in the exchange of cultural perspectives. Every day, people from different parts of the world share their unique ideas to develop a common vision of the future. All of us contribute to Bitcoin’s story through countless decentralized actions, all working toward a common goal. And as we improve the currency from every corner of the world, we all benefit.

We love working with unique personalities like Francisco and Carlos. Yopaki is something only they could have created, blending cultural richness with tech innovation through their own experiences. And we’re happy to support them with our projects: the nodeless and native flavors of the Breez SDK, each catering to the unique needs and visions of our design partners.

So, if you’re ready to add Lightning to your app and introduce us to your corner of the world, get in touch. We’d love to hear about it and share our culture with you.