Blockstream Core #R3KT at delivering Lightning Network

[johnyj]

As anticipated, all other off-chain solutions without touching the bitcoin protocol will be much faster to develop. They don't need to wait for 18 months for a major consensus to be formed within core devs, and that might even trigger a hard fork and derail the whole business plan

Why do you need Lightning Network to open a payment channel when two merchant can simply opening an account in each other's platform and establish a payment channel?