Topic: BTCpay Server: A Real e-Commerce Game Changer? (Read 1138 times)

This seems a reasonable approach as a precaution simply because there is a risk factor (especially after recent news of hacks at FixedFloat) but to be honest there is very complexity involved, it is a fairly simple and seamless process. Where is becomes a pain is if a customer makes a payment to a merchant using another crypto to BTC via FixedFloat/SideShift but it gets suspended until KYC is handed over or a similar scenario.

Those plugins are supposed to make life easier but sometimes they cause far more problems instead.

I would avoid using any plugins with BTCPay or anything doing any kind of crypto processing. Just my view but once you start moving funds or dealing with anything like that unless you are willing do deal with any other issues that might come up the little extra revenue you are going to make is not going to be worth it.

As always just my opinion, but why go adding risk and complexity.

-Dave

As far as anything on those lines being mentioned in this forum, I cannot recall a serious scam allegation against FixedFloat before the first of their alleged hacks (but there have been some allegations overall). If I remember correctly, the latest allegation against FixedFloat eventually ended when the victim received the funds that he tried to exchange but by that time the value had fallen significantly. Whether they withhold funds and return them at a later date or not, they have brought too much negativity to themselves and cannot be trusted.

The fact they have it stated within their Terms and Conditions, it would be prudent to not use SideShift even if the chances of them asking for KYC is very small. In the end, if there is a choice to use as a plugin for BTCPay Server then FixedFloat has to be avoided whereas SideShift can be considered an option.

Did the scam accusations start after the hack? They were not giving people their funds back or what was the nature of the issue?

Although I never found myself in a KYC situation with SideShift, their policy looks "soft" (even though I don't really know the definition of "serious nature").

I would not bother checking about FixedFlaot because regardless of what others claim about them, they have suffered alleged hacks and have scam accusations against them therefore they should be avoided at all costs.

Keeping that aside, I do not know whether they return coins if there is a problem or whether they demand KYC before consideration but this what is stated on the KYCNOTME website about SideShift:

"KYC LEVEL 2  The exchange may request KYC from any user at any time, typically triggered by an automated flag system, leading to a temporary block of funds."

Please edit your original post and include that information there.
By the way, anyone know what happens if I use FF or Sideshift plugin, someone deposits a coin and his coin gets marked as a dirty coin? Imagine that I sell a ring that costs 50$, someone adds it to their cart, pays via the SideShift plugin, and SideShift marks it as a coin with an illegal origin. I know I should ask this question to SideShift or FF but I want to know from your experience, what happens in this case? Does SS or FF ask a user to submit KYC? Or do they return coins to the user in this case?

Since my last post in this thread it seems FixedFloat has been hacked on more than one occasion and add to that the piling up of scam accusations against them.

I would once again advise you to never use the FixedFloat plugin for your BTCPay Server or even their website as a stand alone tool to exchange your crypto because you cannot be guaranteed to receive the funds and in that case the safest thing to do would be to use an alternative.

It is good to see this thread receive a post such as yours where a success story is shared.

There are many options for cryptocurrencies but if your found BTCPay Server to be the solution that worked for you, then that is good news and you are not alone. Many businesses are using it and are also installing plugins for exchanges such as Fixedfloat and SideShift which allow customers to use various crypto at checkout but the shop owner receives BTC.




----------------------------




If you (or anybody else) do install a crypto payment plugin, I would advise you to never use Fixedfloat because they have an outstanding allegation against them and the way they bullied the accuser and his client by forcing them to go through KYC and yet still have no information about whether their €8000 was returned after Fixedfloat confiscated it, you have to beware: Fixedfloat is scamming me for 8000+ EUR IMPORTANT PSA!

I created an e-commerce website for fitness jewellery products that I make. I wanted to implement payment gateway on my website because e-commerce is dead and very new in my country. Strike, Woopayments and many other companies don't support my country. I had some local options but they charge a lot and the plugin requires monthly payments. So what's the solution in this case? To install BTCPayserver plugin on your Wordpress website and accept Bitcoin and altcoin payments. That's what I did and I feel relaxed right now. Cryptocurrencies are the best payment method around the world, they are easy, don't require any specific criteria, support every country and galaxy.

I simply wanted to say thank you to BTCPayserver developers and share my experience here. Plugin and website works nicely but sadly there is no demand on crypto payments.

Sorry for not replying to this earlier, you made some excellent observations which should be kept in mind when thinking about BTCPay Server or any other crypto payment system. You are absolutely right, software providing similar services can be found elsewhere and for business most probably the desire to at some stage to exchange crypto to fiat - there is no doubting that but businesses do evolve so in the future hopefully more online businesses will accept crypto and not feel the need to rush in to exchanging it for fiat.

For some new and existing businesses it might seem for them to make more sense of not paying $8.80 per month on Lunanode or even more money elsewhere and instead pay the commission to 3rd party payment processors in order to minimise outlay at least until the commission begins to exceed the outlay.

Having said that, the biggest obstacle I see standing before those wanting to test or implement a service such as BTCPay Server are the technical requirements. Many business service providers and retailers do not possess the technical know-how to install software using command line. They might be brilliant at selling and marketing but that does not mean they can use BTCPay Server. To be fair to them, it is so much easier for the uninitiated to use a plugin on their ecommerce cart.

And you can do it with any of the nodes in a box yourself. (raspiblitz, mynode, umbrel)

I think the biggest obstacle still is that most businesses need fiat. So they wind up converting most of crypto they take in to cash. With that in mind, it's easier to just use any of the crypto payment gateway services and have them do it for you.

We here on the forum are fringe cases and really like BTC / crypto in general. But for most businesses, it's just another way to get paid.

-Dave

BTCpay server has released v 1.4.4 and this release has various bugs fixed: https://github.com/btcpayserver/btcpayserver/releases

This service is not being used as widely as I would have hoped, probably because of the element of a certain level of technical skills required in order to install which many online sellers and traders may lack. The BTCpay server project has gone from strength to strength therefore I hope those alternatives give this a try because it will save on third-party transaction fees but it will have a small hosting cost.

Lunanode are still launching BTCpay server for clients at just $8.80 per month for anyone wanting to test how it works: https://launchbtcpay.lunanode.com/

Latest version of BTCPay Server comes with some really interesting updates, improvements and bug fixes.
They added support for Taproot, Lightning Address and LNURL protocol, dark/light theme switch and it is still open source available to everyone.
BTCPay Server is probably the best option we currently have to add Bitcoin payment processor and accept BTC payments for your business without any fees or third parties.

Note that version 1.3.1 is released just day after to fix some flickering and payment switching bug.
https://github.com/btcpayserver/btcpayserver/releases

With the ease that BTCPay Server can be used by any ecommerce offering outlet is should be no surprise to find more and more companies integrating it. I also did not know Namecheap were using BTCPay Server but now they others will follow. Maybe many other domain registrars and web hosting companies are already using it.

It many cases it really does make sense for ecommerce traders to cut out the middle men (3rd party plugins) and do it themselves so it saves giving transaction fees to others that do the same job. Once you know you are making enough every month to cover your server fees that runs BTCPay Server then it makes to use it.

I was surprised to find out that Namecheap is now using BTCpay. There is still the BitPay option but BTCpay is right next to it. The minimum amount of funds you can add to your account is only $1 and they are also using bech32 addresses for their invoices and you can pay with Lightning.

https://btcpayserver.org/   :   It works smooth. The only problem I visit is that when creating an invoice, the user will get a bitcoin deposit address only for one time. According to the guide from Btcpayserver, its impossible to save this public key in the database. So when to use this for a casino or something, is there any way to adjust the code that customers will have the same bitcoin address, and not every time a new address that is generated by the system? Many thanks. If you can help me, please PM me and I will pay you for your help.

BitPay offering fiat conversion straight a bank account is a massive plus point for people wanting an easy plugin solution so yes you are right without doubt, as long as others catching up are involving fiat conversions as part of the solution then BitPay would have more competition on its hands and other plugin options would be far greatly used. It will not stop non-BitPay users others using other options but they will have (as you rightly stated) have to find methods of converting their crypto to fiat.

Worthy thoughts but the thing that counts with Bitpay and the overwhelming majority of merchants is the fiat part and nothing else.

The fiat bit is what their competition needs to concentrate on and most won't have the finance or the patience or the contacts to go down that route. They can of course integrate with exchanges but that's another step for merchants themselves to deal with and another account to create. Many won't bother.

Bitpay is a one stop shop and that's what their market wants. The operations that may compete with them on that will be just as corporate and may have their own gross habits too.

A pure crypto economy would be a different matter but that's generations away, if ever.

Thank you for bringing it to my attention, I have added the links now 

i think you forgot to insert the useful links in the OP. It would be awesome if they were included especially for Newbies who might me prone to phishing websites 

BitPay is still a major force within the crypto-sphere but over time their powers will definitely dwindle as competition rises.

There are so many easy plugins for various e-commerce carts and also BTCpay Server with other options for those that can install and run software on their own server it means BitPay with its fiat withdrawals which are beneficial will not be the only option out there.

They will remain one of the most popular choices for anyone who doesn't want to deal with the hassle of selling coins for fiat by themselves. Medium-sized and bigger companies will also tend to prefer to work with someone more established in the space. But it's always great if the barriers of entry are lowerfor non-technical enthusiasts as well as for those who don't mind the price volatility, perhaps due to fat margins.

And for most businesses volatility also might not necessarily be a huge issue so long as cryptocurrency payments are a small percentage of their total payments.

I understand your point about volatility in crypto prices but as old-fashioned as it might seem the straight forward way around this issue is for a store owner to manually convert their received BTC in to a stable coin themselves via an exchange.

Thank you for clarifying it. It's kind of a hassle to register an account to buy an item or a service of some sort. I remember when using CoinPayments, it would easily be sent you just have to put some details like email. I steered away from CoinPayments as well when they required the KYC as well for members. It's become quite a hassle as well.

---

It's a healthy competition then. I'm hopeful that there would be a payment processor that would overtake anyone. Could there be a decentralized one too? No regulations to follow or something? It would be harder and lots of consequences with that, I guess.

@crwth, LTU_btc It's true that it will likely dominate for a long time to come, but when it actually has good competitors who now have funding, like btcpay does, it will be forced to innovate to remain competitive. So if it chooses to do so, then it's still a win.


This is what I'm getting at. It used to be something of an effort to learn to use the thing but now with the additional options, fee management, escrow, just so many things you get (that you don't with BitPay), eventually, the more savvy web users will use btcpayserver as easily as they would BitPay, if not even easier.

They were great before they got funding, they're going to be so much faster at rolling out new implementations now they got financial backing.

P.S. Good to see this move to Service Discussion, deserves one!

The latest version of btcpayserver shows exactly how far the team behind it have come as a group, well done to them. With all the assistance they received from grants especially the $150,000 from Kraken (who now use btcpayserver in their exchange) they have come a long way.

Those with websites using wordpress, woocommerce, drupal and others that can implement btcpayserver via plugins should consider giving it a try.

I'm in a similar boat.  I sadly suspect there will always be a market for centralised services.  It largely depends on the individual.  Some people are prepared to take the initiative, learn what they need to learn and do things on their own.  Some would rather take the comfortable and convenient option of trusting someone else to handle things for them, or perhaps have other significant commitments to their time and would rather outsource anything they don't have time to grasp.  The latter types will continue to flock to Bitpay and their ilk.

Fingers crossed that Bitpay's influence will be reduced, but I'm not convinced it'll end their business model.

I'd love if it would be true, because IMO Bitpay is worst payment service, but it's not going to happen soon I think. Bitpay is very popular and if so many people use them, probably it means that they are satisfied with it. And I think that other services like Coinpayments or Coingate isn't bad at all.
BTCpayServer is great decentralized alternative, but it's not well known. And they don't have deep pockets for marketing like their competitors.
And probably it's not for everyone. Running full node, converting Bitcoins to fiat - it's extra hassle. While most businnes prefer simplicity and convenience.

If your server is going to host other things, and I mean if it will get a lot of website traffic, then cpu and memory wise it should easily be able to handle running a full node as well, you only have to worry about finding enough hard disk drives to store the blockchain on. And servers with RAID configurations help in this regard because they combine the space a bunch of hard disks into one giant disk with only a little reserved space. I think 4TB and 8TB size configurations make your node future proof when the blockchain inevitably grows larger.

As for the plugins: Glad to hear WooCommerce has an integration with BTCpay as you can host this yourself alongside Wordpress so you get the benefit of fully hosting your store stack yourself and not being at the mercy of third parties who might for whatever reason shut down your storefront or seize your profits.

I agree that BitPay is not going to die anytime soon because as said above, most merchants wants a convenient and easy way to instantly convert BTC to USD and BitPay happens to be one of the first services to provide that. However, I don't see them dominating the payment processors scene... not with the way they're currently operating anyway (enforcing KYC for buyers, trying hard to push B-cash, implementing BIP71,  banning countries etc.).

The problem is converting from cryptocurrencies to fiat, when a store accepts payments in cryptocurrencies they does not do it charity but to make profits, the volatility of cryptocurrencies makes it difficult to determine the profits.

If you are a store owner, I prefer to pay high fees and get profits on my bank account instead of waiting until I make some gains from cryptocurrency.
If BTCpay accepts some stable coins or exchange to them, it may make a difference.

When I got my first website up and running, I was accepting payments using Coinpayments. I'm not entirely knowledgeable in creating your own node and using electronic wallet addressing and change addresses, etc. So I would just opt for Coinpayments. It's quite easy just because you would only put the generated button and put it on the website.

I guess in BTCpay, the setup would be a little bit hassle, but once you have made it, it's worth it. Just because of the node you are going to make to support the Bitcoin network, but the hassle of paying monthly wouldn't be ideal for startups right now.

It would be getting used to it. I'm sure it's a game-changer for different websites.

---

Why is it numbered? I bet it's going to continue long and could dominate the payment processors scene.

I know this thread hasn't been updated in almost a year but I failed to find a discussion thread or ANN for BTCpayserver.

Been a huge fan of it for a long time, been encouraging one of my clients to go for it, and with the recent happenings surrounding it, it's really never been easier to use.

I actually missed out that it's been getting quite a bit of funding recently, its developer even's got a direct grant. Latest version now even supports refunds from escrow. It's come a long way. Bitpay's days are numbered, wouldn't you agree?

https://launchbtcpay.lunanode.com/

There is a specific discount at Lunanode for people who want to install of BTC Pay Server

It comes with a one-click easy install solution and costs just $8.80 per month. Other cheaper solutions (hosting) can easily be found too.

Excellent post. Very well put.

The documentation guide is handy and they also have Telegram too where the team is very active and very useful: https://t.me/btcpayserver

Its advantage compared to other payment processors is that it's open-source and you can run your own full node and accept payments through it. Meaning, no fees, no KYC needed, no blocked countries, supports SegWit, more privacy and security, supports Tor, LN, etc.
If you're interested in deploying it, read the docs. Using a third-party solution might be the easiest way to go with if you are a newbie, but it comes with some limitations.

This is the first time I saw BTCpayer. Seems like I am already behind the development of this platform since the thread was made in 2018. Anyway, what is this platform all about? Is this allowed to all countries or there are countries that are banned to use this?
Another thing, what are the api? If you said that it is easy to install. I think it is efficient to use.

Yes the truth is BTCpayserver is very easy to install and very easy to run. When you log in as an administrator you can set it up easy and then get started. You can prune the block chain so it you do not have to download the whole massive Bitcoin one.

It has lots of advantages and there is a Woocommerce plugin as well as others available.

It has improved and gained momentum in plenty.

I am really impressed with their work, they are very active on their channels too. Great communication, great team.

I wish them success

https://twitter.com/BtcpayServer/status/1128956459377541120

So it looks like BTCPayServer supports the three leading LN implementations so far, c-Lightning, LND and now Eclair.

https://github.com/btcpayserver/BTCPayServer.Lightning

Does anybody have comments to make about their experiences using BTCPayServer?

Sounds good to me but $20 a month for small businesses is something they might not want to pay unless they are assured of regular crypto income.

The one-click install is an excellent step forward though.

Your scenario is purely theoretical, see average transaction volume on BTC network:

https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionvalue.html

That said, if the scenario you have conjured becomes the norm then we will facilitate it in a manner where our clients needs are satisfied (as we have done time and again in the past).

Very much appreciate the ideas though, thanks!

I don't think there are automatic updates (why would you let anyone push files on your server anyway ?), but I assume that everyone is capable of copy/pasting files from github...

Would this handle automatic updates as well? Because they would at least have to understand basic operation/maintenance of it once installed if not.

Guys, you don't need to learn anything/pay anyone. If you don't want to bother at all, BTCPay also has Azure 1-click Deploy (Costs are about 15-20EUR per month, after fully deployed). Now tell me thats not more affordable than any provider. For 20EUR a month, no installation process (Simple click of a button) you can process as many transactions as you want with same compatibility as BitPay's API !

I mean if a merchant had 1001 transactions a month which were mini-payments that accumulated to be worth less than $500 but they ended up paying as a loss.

0.0001 BTC x 1001 transactions = 0.1001 BTC

0.1001 BTC = $380 today

SetGetGo charge for 1001 transaction at 0.0001 BTC = $500

It's definitely interesting, and I'll be staring/bookmarking this for future clients (as I have had this requested in the past).
I don't know if it's going to spell the end for services like BitPay; just simply because I know there's a huge sense of security when it comes to having a service hosted for you vs. you hosting it yourself; along with the fact a developer would most likely have to be hired to set this up.

Like others have mentioned, for the business owners who are willing to learn, it's definitely worth it.

But for anyone who is prepared to learn, they'll save some money by cutting out the middleman.  I see why you feel the need to defend your business model, but at the end of the day, there is a cost for utilising your service.  You have to maintain a profit margin and that profit comes directly from your customers paying you to do something they could be doing themselves.

This is not exactly true. I worked with BTCPay last week just to try it out, and you don't have to manage anything. Its designed to be a drop-in replacement for Bitpay, so any services working with Bitpay (ecommerce plugins, APIs etc) will also work with BTCPay.

Can you clarify what you mean here? An example or two would help me understand your point and hopefully make changes on our side to improve our offering.

It's not fair to say this. Installing and supporting a product the likes of BTCPay is non-trivial. If you are a small merchant then you most likely do not have the technical expertise to do this, after all your business is your business and not maintaining BTCPay. No doubt, folks with significant technical expertise (I am assuming you are in this category) don't have a problem handling the ins and outs of running one's own node, installing BTCPay, debugging it, customizing it et cetera, but for mom & pop running a vape store it's an entirely different ballgame.

Interesting but the fact small transactions are part of the inclusive transactions package means that merchants could effectively be losing out by covering fees from their own pockets.

Yes it seems the best way forward for those who have some tech knowledge rather than use 3rd party plugins

SetGetGo here, we added support Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin and Dash. We also adopted KYC/AML practices and moved away from our own wallets to Bip-32/HD wallets, so money goes directly from the client's wallet to the merchant's wallet (no middleman holding your funds!).

Furthermore, we improved our fixed-fee pricing structure to be flexible and way more predictable from the merchant's perspective and yet still completely independent of the amounts being processed:

Startups - Up to 100 transactions / month - Free
Business - Up to 1,000 transactions /month - $100
Enterprise - Up to 10,000 transactions /month - $500

I think that smaller merchants are still better off with some payment processor. Running a server with bitcoind is not cheap, especially on Azure. I guess you can find some cheap solution online for like 20$ a month but would you really trust that provider than...
On the other side, if you are larger processor with a lot of transactions each month, this will save a lot of money.

Please also add Blockonomics - Pricing :1%.

We are direct to wallet/permissionless payment gateway and well known in the ecosystem

I don't think BTCPay Server will be a valid replacement for third party payment processors.
Here it is the list of my thoughts resulting from my experience with BTCPay server:

- You need to configure and deploy, maintain and monitor the server by yourself. This is not as trivial as it may sound. You need to start he wallets, connect the job to the wallet and deploy everything.

- Even pushing everything on Azure VMs, you will still incur in Microsoft to sporadically restart the VMs/Cloud services/Web apps and this would potentially generate downtime and errors during the daily payments processing.From my standpoint, this is not acceptable for a payment processor service.

- You will still need to monitor/upgrade the Wallet(s) that BTCPay is attached to manage the payment requests.

Adopting a third party payment processor, all the points enlisted above are completely covered by the payment processor itself and that is not trivial. Obviously you will probably have to pay a service fee for this which depends by the processor itself.

I think instead, that what is important to consider when you chose a Bitcoin processor is what that processor really offers in terms of functionality set, fees applied, how reliable this processor is.

In the list payment processor enlisted, there are really well known processors like Bitpay, Coingate, etc, I see a processor I didn't hear about before SetGetGo. Interesting they apply a flat fee. As far as I can tell no other processors do that. The real question would be how reliable SetGetGo is.

Does anybody actually use SetGetGo for Bitcoin payments?
 

In the unlikely event I were to start my own business, BTCPay Server is almost certainly the route I'd go.  Better decentralisation, fewer middlemen and potential cost saving benefits as the icing on the cake.  

I think if more people only realised this was an option available to them, the payment processors would have to start considering the long-term sustainability of their business model.  Pretty much the only benefit they have left is the instant conversion to fiat.  And if fiat does become less desirable over time as the global economy worsens, they'll have no advantage remaining.

CheapAir probably dropped Coinbase because of the 1% fee that Coinbase charge but that is after the first $1 million in transactions if memory serves me correct.

I tested their service, CheapAir offer Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin and Dash as methods of payment.

For Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin and Dash the QR code is genertated on https://gateway.gocoin.com

For Bitcoin the QR code is generated on: btcpayserver.cheapair.com

Seems like the team implementing the plugins are not making full use of the facility that BTCPay Server provides. Why on earth would they use two plugins, one that is effectively free (BTCPay) and the other (Gocoin) that they pay merchant fees to?

CheapAir dropped Coinbase as their payment processor few days ago and decided to use BTCPayServer instead so we're definitely in the right path. It's just a matter of time until open source and decentralized projects will take over in the crypto scene, centralized services will become obsolete.

BTCPay Server: https://github.com/btcpayserver/

Could this spell the end (or be the beginning of the end) for payment processors such these:

Gateway            Acc      Fee     $2,500    $5,000    $10,000    $25,000

Bitpay               YES      1%     $25.00    $50.00    $100.00    $250.00
Bitcoinpay          YES      0.8%  $20.00    $40.00    $80.00     $200.00
Coingate            YES      1%    $25.00    $50.00    $100.00    $250.00
Coinpayments     YES      0.5% $12.50    $25.00     $50.00     $125.00
SetGetGo            NO      $1.66  $1.66     $1.66      $1.66       $1.66

So the most appealing to an ecommerce merchant from the above list would be SetGetGo simply because they charge a fixed fee of $1.66 regardless of the amount of transaction (final fee the customer pays at checkout). The problem with SetGetGo is that their pricing structure fails when merchants offer micro-payments. For example if a merchant sells an item for $1 then how can they pay $1.66 to SetGetGo as they would make a loss.

So while it might suit any ecommerce platform that have minimum amounts to checkout to use SetGetGo the margin between using Coinpayments (the lowest fixed fee from the list above at 0.5%) and SetGetGo (fixed $1.66 fee) is the breakeven point: A rate of 0.5% of $334 a customer will pay using Bitcoin at checkout is = $1.67 therefore anything above $334 makes sense to use SetGetGo. Anything below a $334 final checkout amount for customers using Bitcoin will be better to use whichever plugin works for your cart (Coinpayments at 0.5% is the lowest)

I have not carried out any research on reviews about the level of customer services and withdrawal fees for any Bitcoin merchant providers, I have only taken transaction fees in to consideration only so for further information you will have to do your own research.

Which now brings us to BTCPay Server. Is it a real game changer? First of all this is how BTCPay Server works:

(taken from a Reddit post) Think of BTCPay as a server which allows you to accept bitcoin without intermediates. The payment processors act as a server as well, but your customer's data, IP addresses go through them. Furthermore, most of the payment processors hold your crypto payments, and you’d have to withdraw it or convert it, similar to what exchanges do.

Benefits

    You are running a full node and helping the network

    You are protecting the privacy of your customers

    You’re using Bitcoin the way it’s supposed to be used, p2p, directly

    You’re avoiding fees that all payment processors have (monthly subscription/fees per transaction usually 1-2%)

    You can accept payments directly to your hardware wallet (currently integrated with Ledger very well) and you’re the immediate owner of those assets

    You can be a host and help other smaller shops accept payments through their stores

    You can accept other cryptocurrencies through BTCPay directly (Litecoin) and over 40 currencies if you enable shapeshift integration

    You will be able to accept Lightning Network payments

    Multiple merchants can have the same server and host their stores there, though this raises the issue of trust

Disadvantages

    It currently costs around 50-70$ per month (the cost varies depending on the server you’re using, it can be as low as 30$ )

    It takes a bit more time to setup and configures to fit your store needs, (took 3-4 hours for myself, I’m not particularly tech-savvy).

    You can not convert to fiat currency right away like with some payment processors, though in my personal opinion, the immediate conversion ruins the whole point of accepting bitcoin and does not increase the adoption.

How BTCPay works?

Currently, there are three basic elements of the puzzle:

    The server

    The plugin

    The wallet

You’re running your own server which has the full node running; the server is called BTCPay. Once installed it will be connected to your website subdomain. The plugin connects your server to your Woocommerce Store. In the plugin settings, you can set most of the stuff. A bit more advanced setting can be configured on the server. Your receive payments to your wallet (it’s possible to configure Ledger Nano S right out of the box).

This means that the buyer, pays directly to you in cryptocurrency and that the payment does not go anywhere else, the IP address is not leaked, the buyer data is not shared with a third party in any way. You will see the payment in your ledger wallet.

BTCPay is not the only solution to accept cryptocurrency directly, but after months of trying out, I found it the safest and the easiest to configure.

List of merchants using BTCPay

    9bravos.com

    bitcoinshirt.co

    Coincards.ca

    CryptoAsylum.com

    halongmining.com

    ludvigart.com

    ynotek.com

Useful Links

    BTCPay Website

    BTCPay Server Test page - feel free to connect your store and test it out

    BTCPay Slack

    BTCPay Github

    BTCPay on Twitter

    BTCPay on YouTube (end of Reddit post)

On their Github is shows the following coins as being accepted alongside Bitcoin:

    BGold
    Dogecoin
    Feathercoin
    Groestlcoin
    Litecoin
    Monacoin
    Polis
    UFO

The coins are optional, QR codes are generated instantly by clicking the coin icon. I have not looked at how the ShapeShift integration works. According to the Reddit post it might seems optional but it does not seem to have an affiliate link on rollover or URL when opening ShapeShift. Personally I read so many negative reviews about ShapeShift I decided to use Changelly the few times I needed to. When clicking ShapeShift it opens a new pop up and allows customers to swap their coin to the method of payment with ease. Maybe will not look so smooth when using a mobile/cellphone with limited screen size. I am using a PC so have a larger screen to view.

BTCpay has a great looking UI and had lots going for it. According to their Github they have plugins for:

  WooCommerce
  Drupal
  Prestashop
  WHMCS

If they release plugins for Opencart, Zencart, osCommerce and Magento then basically they have the main players. With the majority of ecommerce websites running on Wordpress/Woocommerce they already have taken a huge step forward to offer a massive percentage of ecommerce traders with their already released plugin.

Have your own personal transaction fee free Bitcoin payment system by paying for an MS Azure running your node versus Using a third party payment plugin and not paying any MS Azure server fees to run your own node but instead paying transaction fees and/or withdrawal fees from your merchant. Either way you will spend money as merchants, if not in advance for the server/node then later after transactions take place.

So what are your views of innovations such as BTCPay compared with older crypto payment processors?