How to Accept Bitcoin Payments: Business Guide

Accepting bitcoin in a business is less complicated than most guides make it sound. You do not need a payment processor, a merchant account, or approval from a card network. You need a way to generate a payment request, a wallet to receive the funds, and a decision about what to do with the bitcoin afterwards. This guide covers all three, for businesses of any size.

Film · Accepting bitcoin · 1:32

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A short film in the language of this site's homepage, from the shop's side of the counter: what UK shops paid for card acceptance in 2018 (the Payment Systems Regulator's figures) and how a chargeback can reverse a sale; taking bitcoin with a wallet and an open-source payment server the shop runs itself, with no middleman holding the money and no product named; the invoice in sats at the till; free software and a tiny Lightning fee, usually paid by the customer; final settlement, which also means a refund is a new payment; and the business's own choice to keep the sats in multisig or convert them, taxable either way. Measured in fiat, bitcoin's price moves, but one bitcoin is always one bitcoin.

Read the film, with its sources

Module 1 of 4Accepting bitcoin. Taking bitcoin in a business is simpler than most guides suggest: no payment processor, no merchant account, no approval from a payment network. A business needs a wallet, a way to ask for payments, and a decision about what to do with the bitcoin afterwards.The Bitcoin Transition, Accepting Bitcoin (the module)
2018Every card payment carries a fee for the shop. The UK’s Payment Systems Regulator found that in 2018 merchants taking under £380,000 a year by card, about 90% of all merchants, paid on average about 1.9% of their card takings for card acceptance; those taking over £50 million paid about 0.4%. (The figures are read from the regulator’s chart, to the nearest tenth of a point.)Payment Systems Regulator, Market review into card-acquiring services: final report (MR18/1.8, November 2021), Figure 10
ChargebacksA card payment can also come back. If a cardholder disputes a payment, say for goods never delivered or a payment that looks fraudulent, and the card issuer finds the cardholder has the right under the scheme’s rules, the issuer raises a chargeback, and the shop can lose the takings. As the regulator puts it, “A chargeback is different from a refund.” A refund is the shop’s decision; a chargeback is the bank’s.Payment Systems Regulator, Market review into card-acquiring services: final report (MR18/1.8, November 2021), §3.22
The set-upTo take bitcoin, a shop needs no merchant account and no payment network’s approval: a wallet it controls, and an open-source payment server it runs itself, on its own small rented server or with a hosting provider. The software is free. It creates invoices with Lightning and on-chain options, runs a point of sale on a tablet at the counter, plugs into online shops, and exports each payment with its value in fiat currency at the time, for the accounts. Payments go straight to the shop’s own wallet: no middleman holds the money. The module reckons a basic set-up takes under an hour.The Bitcoin Transition, Accepting Bitcoin (the module)
At the counterAt the counter, the shop rings up the sale and its payment server turns it into an invoice: the amount in sats and a code to scan. The customer scans it with their wallet, confirms and sends; the shop’s screen marks the order paid. On Lightning that is almost at once; for an on-chain payment the shop chooses how many confirmations to wait for. Online, bitcoin is one more option at the checkout, with no account for the customer to open and no personal data taken by the payment server.The Bitcoin Transition, Accepting Bitcoin (the module)
Costs comparedThe payment server’s software is free; the shop pays for the server it runs on. The network fee is set by the payer’s wallet and usually paid by the payer. On Lightning it is tiny: on 25 August 2026 the median fee per hop was 103 parts per million plus half a sat, about a hundredth of one per cent. On-chain fees vary with demand, and the shop pays its own when it later moves the coins. Against that, the regulator’s figures put the smallest shops’ card fees at about 1.9% of takings in 2018.mempool.space Lightning network statistics (public channels it can see), median fee per hop, 25 August 2026 Payment Systems Regulator, Market review into card-acquiring services: final report (MR18/1.8, November 2021), Figure 10
Final settlementA bitcoin payment, once settled, is final: no bank can pull it back, so there are no chargebacks. The white paper names the cost of reversible payments: “Merchants must be wary of their customers”. But finality cuts both ways. A refund is a new payment, sent back by the shop, so the shop needs a refund policy and a way to send one; and a customer has no bank to appeal to, which is why a fair shop matters.Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System (2008), §1 Introduction
Keep or convertWhat to do with the takings is the business’s choice, and this is not advice. It can keep the sats, convert some to fiat currency to pay fiat bills, or convert them all. Keep only working money in the payment server’s Lightning wallet, which is a hot wallet; savings belong in cold storage, which on this site means multisig, such as 2 of 3 keys held by different people in different places. Multisig has risks of its own: lose its descriptor, or enough keys to fall below the threshold, and the coins are gone; key-holders change, and succession needs a plan. Either way, takings count for tax: in the UK, HMRC says bitcoin a trading business accepts from customers must be “accounted for within the taxable trading profits”. Check your local rules with a qualified accountant who knows cryptoassets.HMRC Cryptoassets Manual, CRYPTO40350: Cryptoassets for businesses: business income paid in cryptoassets The Bitcoin Transition, Multi-sig Basics (Self-Custody, module 4)The Bitcoin Transition, Accepting Bitcoin (the module)
One bitcoinMeasured in fiat, its price moves. One bitcoin is always one bitcoin: you don’t price bitcoin, you price things in bitcoin. Few prices are set in it yet, few customers pay this way so far, and keeping it safe takes care.
The Bitcoin TransitionFiat cards take a cut, and can take it back. Bitcoin stays paid. Card fees took about 1.9% of the smallest UK shops’ card takings in 2018, and a chargeback can reverse a sale; a bitcoin payment costs the shop little to receive and, once settled, stays settled.

This guide is part of the Should Your Business Hold Bitcoin? cluster.

The Tool: BTCPay Server

BTCPay Server is the standard for business bitcoin acceptance. It is free, open-source, self-hostable (or available through hosting providers), and charges no fee beyond the network transaction cost. It is the closest thing to a default in the space, and for good reason — it removes every intermediary from the payment path.

What it provides:

Payment request generation — invoices with on-chain and Lightning options, QR codes, and payment links.
Point of sale — a web-based POS interface for physical retail; run it on a tablet or phone at the counter.
E-commerce integration — plugins for WooCommerce, Shopify, PrestaShop, and other platforms.
Accounting export — transaction records with fiat-equivalent values at the time of each payment.
No KYC, no third party — payments settle directly to a wallet you control.

The Three Channels

Physical retail

For a shop, café, or any in-person business, the BTCPay point-of-sale interface running on a tablet generates a QR code for each sale. The customer scans it with their wallet, confirms, and pays. Over Lightning, settlement is effectively instant — faster than a card terminal. The customer experience is a scan and a tap.

Online checkout

For e-commerce, BTCPay integrates into the checkout flow like any other payment method. The customer selects "Pay with Bitcoin," sees the invoice, and completes the payment. No account creation, no card details, no personal data collected by a processor. The order is marked paid when the payment confirms.

Invoicing

For service businesses, freelancers, and B2B, BTCPay generates payment links you can email or embed in an invoice. The client clicks, pays, and you receive the funds directly. This is the simplest channel to start with — one client, one invoice, one payment.

The Economics

The cost comparison is stark. Card processing typically costs 2–3% per transaction plus a fixed fee. Lightning routing fees are usually a small fraction of a percent. For a business processing significant volume, the difference runs to tens of thousands per year — money that stays in the business rather than going to a payment network.

To put a number on it: for a business taking €500,000 a year by card, a difference of about two percentage points comes to roughly €10,000 a year that stays in the business.

There is also no chargeback risk. Bitcoin transactions are final. A customer who wants to dispute a payment contacts the business directly, as with cash — there is no card network that can reverse the transaction unilaterally months later. For businesses that suffer chargeback fraud, this alone can justify the switch.

The Decision That Actually Matters: Convert or Hold

The mechanics of accepting bitcoin are easy. The decision that matters is what to do with it once received. There are two options, and they correspond to two different postures.

Convert at the point of sale

Services like Strike and OpenNode convert bitcoin payments to fiat automatically, instantly, at the moment of sale. The business never holds bitcoin — it accepts bitcoin for the customer's convenience and the lower fees, but its books stay in fiat. This is the right choice for a business that wants the payment benefits without any bitcoin exposure.

Hold as reserves

The alternative is to retain some or all of the bitcoin received, adding it to the business's reserves. This connects the payments decision to the treasury decision: every sale settled in bitcoin and held is a small, automatic accumulation of a non-depreciating reserve. Over time, for a business operating with a Bitcoin standard mindset, the bitcoin held grows relative to the fiat operating account. Fiat obligations — rent, wages, suppliers — are paid from a fiat account funded by converting only as much bitcoin as needed.

Most businesses start by converting and shift toward holding as they grow comfortable. There is no single right answer; there is the answer that fits your cash needs and your conviction. The tax treatment differs between the two paths, so factor that in.

Tax and Accounting

In most jurisdictions, bitcoin received in exchange for goods or services is treated as ordinary income at its fiat value on the day of receipt. This is manageable: BTCPay Server can export settlement records for standard accounting software, with the fiat equivalent recorded at the moment of each payment.

For the detail, see Bitcoin and Business Tax: What Owners Need to Know.

Getting Started

The minimum viable setup: deploy a BTCPay Server instance (self-hosted or via a provider like Voltage or LunaNode), connect a wallet you control, and generate your first invoice. Setup time is measured in hours. Start with a single channel — invoicing is easiest — and expand. The Bitcoin for Business course walks through the full configuration.

You do not need anyone's permission to accept bitcoin. That is the entire point of it.

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The Bitcoin Transition

The Bitcoin Transition is a free, non-commercial educational project. We publish from first principles, in the voice of the protocol itself: direct, technically precise, and free from fiat-denominated framing.

How to Accept Bitcoin Payments: A Business Guide