Accepting Bitcoin payments has proven to be quite a difficult venture for a lot of merchants these days. It is unclear why that would be the case, though. After all, there are a lot of merchant service providers people can use to accept Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. BTCPay Server is a new, free and open-source solution facilitating Bitcoin payment acceptance.
BTCPay Server is a Viable Solution
There is always a demand for alternative solutions to existing Bitcoin payment processors. More specifically, a lot of people use Coinbase or BitPay to accept Bitcoin payments, which makes a lot of sense. Both companies have built a solid reputation in this regard, even though they are not perfect under any circumstances. There is plenty of room for competition in this space; that much is certain.
Whether or not BTCPay Server can provide what businesses are looking for remains to be determined. Having a free and open-source alternative could go a very long way in the quest to take Bitcoin mainstream. That is not a guarantee for success whatsoever, although it certainly seems there will be some use for it right away. Moreover, one can integrate Bitpay services with BTCPay Server, which is pretty interesting to take into account.
Under the hood, BTCPay Server provides a Bitcoin acceptance solution which doesn’t require any private key information whatsoever. This also means businesses accepting payments can store their Bitcoin in any way they like or convert it to fiat currency as needed. Customers will be greeted with a user-friendly checkout page, which will certainly be appreciated as well. After all, solutions must be convenient in order for both businesses and individuals to take them seriously.
Moreover, there is an option to manage and generate reports accordingly. A lot of businesses want to gain more insights into how they generate revenue in Bitcoin and what they can do to improve upon things. Plus, it provides a convenient way to search for invoices based on whatever criteria makes the most sense to clients. It’s an interesting way to go about accepting Bitcoin payments.
The thing that makes BTCPay Server most different from its competition is that users are advised to download the source code and host the software on their own servers accordingly. It is not necessarily a less intuitive approach, but it does require some hands-on experience, to say the least. Then again, Bitcoin is all about taking back financial control, as is any solution facilitating BTC payments.
That being said, there is an option to sign up for a BTCPay Server account if businesses prefer to do so. While this is a more-than-valid approach to getting on board with this new service, hosting it oneself is always the better way to go. It will be interesting to see which of these approaches businesses like best when everything’s said and done. More ways to accept Bitcoin payments is never a bad thing; that much is certain.
