The genesis story of BTCPay Server is indisputably some of the iconic moments in Bitcoin historical past. A single developer, feeling betrayed by Bitpay, a bitcoin funds processing large and its try at co-opting Bitcoin, declared financial conflict on the corporate in a tweet that can by no means be forgotten by the Bitcoin business; “That is lies, my belief in you is damaged, I’ll make you out of date.”
Nicolas Dorier went on to create some of the extensively distributed open supply tasks within the Bitcoin business and maybe the invoicing and funds business as an entire: BTCPay Server. A lot has been written in regards to the context and motivation behind Dorier’s founding of the undertaking — there’s even a documentary about it.
What’s seldom highlighted is how bold a undertaking BTCPay Server is, how feature-rich it has grow to be and the way deeply built-in it’s with the business. Actually, it’s straightforward to overlook that as an open supply undertaking with no centralized database of customers, BTCPay Server is each a large privateness improve for its customers and represents the elimination of a basic intermediary processing funds. Consequently, Dorier and the BTCPay Server neighborhood have created a public items infrastructure — a form of commons of fee processing — that gives customers actual worth by saving them charges, and offering them a a lot smoother person expertise on condition that no private data is required for the funds to movement.
Humbly described on their web site as “a self-hosted, open-source cryptocurrency fee processor,” BTCPay Server is an invoicing and accounting system for retailers, a totally featured Bitcoin pockets with full node capabilities; on-chain, Lightning Community and Liquid Community assist; {hardware} pockets assist; and a modular plugin system. The plugins specifically prolong the core of BTCPay Server into a variety of niches. In addition they combine into e-commerce giants resembling WooCommerce and Shopify.
It’s considerably tough to gauge the success and scope of BTCPay Server. As a result of it’s a self-hosted platform that doesn’t seize buyer information of any variety — it has no central cloud service as different fee processors do — our view into its success is considerably restricted.
Nevertheless, we will get a way of their attain by proxy of different metrics, for instance, their major software program repository has had over 170 open supply contributors, with 8,393 commits on the time of writing.
As of 2025, BTCPay Server has had a million downloads immediately from its GitHub repository, which doesn’t account for cloud suppliers of the software program as hosted by firms like Voltage or Lunanode. It is usually typically the case that one occasion of BTCPay Server serves a number of retailers and hosts a number of shops concurrently.
R0ckstardev, one of many high contributors to the undertaking, informed Bitcoin Journal that there may very well be lots of of hundreds of cases of BTCPay Server working all through the world. Tobe Chileta, a contributor to the undertaking, additionally informed Bitcoin Journal that “of the seven continents of the world, I believe it’s only Antarctica that I haven’t seen somebody run BTCPay server.” He added, “I’m sure we have now retailers working in Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Europe and Australia.”
Firms
BTCPay Server’s web site enterprise listing, whereas removed from exhaustive, covers lots of of retailers onboarded. The BTCPay Server neighborhood additionally does common case research of person cohorts or main retailers that use the software program, documenting their integration and story of their case research web page. It provides unbelievable insights into quite a lot of Bitcoin communities all through the world and contains helpful guides on tips on how to replicate numerous outcomes and implementations.
Namecheap, for instance, boasted over 70 million {dollars}’ of bitcoin quantity since their integration of BTCPay Server. From Could 18, 2020, to October 2024 they clocked in 1.1m transactions in complete with over 500,000 customers paying in bitcoin, leading to over $73 million in income by means of funds comprised of over 200 nations.
BTC Inc, the father or mother firm of the largest Bitcoin convention on the planet, has for years been organising BTCPay Server for its retailers, and even has a one-hour behind-the-scenes documentary on the complexities of organising dozens of retailers at a convention (filmed throughout the Nashville 2024 Bitcoin convention). The occasion noticed over 25,000 attendees, together with the forty seventh president of the U.S., Donald J. Trump.
On this most up-to-date Bitcoin 2025 convention in Las Vegas, BTCPay Server was used to course of a brand new world file of Bitcoin transactions inside an eight-hour interval, with 4,187 transactions in complete. The preliminary goal was 4,000 transactions and was set by the Guinness World Information group.
Integrations and Plugins
One of the crucial essential dimensions of BTCPay Server is its plugin system. Given the wide range of the way firms can work together with Bitcoin, the developer neighborhood has optimized the BTCPay Server code towards a plugin mannequin that builders can construct for with a well-documented set of GitHub repos and an API. At this time there are over 30 plugins accessible on BTCPay Server. Listed below are among the biggest hits:
Boltz Swap Trade Plugin
Boltz is an atomic swap trade targeted on the assorted Bitcoin layers resembling Liquid, Lightning, Rootstock and naturally Bitcoin on-chain. It has gained prominence of late as a quite simple resolution to the channel rebalancing challenges Lightning wallets face. R0ckstardev informed Bitcoin Journal that he’s notably impressed with the Boltz integration, and even tweeted as a lot earlier this 12 months.
Branded as a noncustodial Bitcoin Bridge, Boltz permits customers to swap between totally different Bitcoin layers whereas retaining most management of their funds, utilizing atomic swap know-how that eliminates third-party belief throughout crypto-native funds. For instance, you need to use Boltz by way of BTCPay Server to make a Lightning fee, the place the sats are initially held at relaxation in a Liquid community pockets and are pulled from that stability by the Boltz plugin. The L-BTC is atomically swapped for sats on the Lightning Community by way of the Boltz trade and the satoshis movement to the tip recipient. This complete course of is successfully noncustodial.
This is similar sort of “lightning service supplier” model infrastructure with which Breez pockets lately introduced integration. Whereas it isn’t fairly as low-cost as a user-operated Lightning node will be in the perfect of instances, it’s far simpler to arrange and run — solely demanding a number of clicks on the BTCPay Server interface. So far as BTCPay Server is worried, this Boltz plugin represents a full Lightning node, integrating natively with the invoicing and accounting layers.
This tech additionally scales fairly properly: One BTCPay Server admin can assist many various retailers and never even should run or handle an ordinary Lightning node, for the reason that plugin helps automated liquidity administration.
The Bolt Playing cards Plugin
The Bolt card, an organization and product created by the Coincenter trade, has come into prominence lately due to its distinctive graphics and the laser-eyes that mild up on tap-to-pay. They, too, have a BTCPay Server plugin that lets customers handle and join these cool NFC playing cards to their wallets by way of the plugin.
Bolt playing cards are NFC tap-to-pay units that operate like debit playing cards. Customers could make bitcoin funds in particular person with the identical tap-to-pay expertise delivered by Visa and Mastercard, although with way more privateness since bankcards transmit your identify and full card particulars with each fee whereas Lightning customers have the potential to pay immediately from their very own Lightning nodes and with out personally figuring out data required for funds to course of.
The Bolt card plugin in BTCPay Server is pretty simple, permitting customers to arrange, reset and test the stability of their Bolt playing cards, permitting customers to spend immediately from their BTCPay Server-integrated Lightning nodes.
Ghost running a blog suite
Ghost, a preferred open supply running a blog tech stack has lately built-in with BTCPay by way of a plugin, letting customers settle for donations and paywall content material. The mixing covers all types of media codecs and helps a drained membership for unique content material, akin to Patreon however with bitcoin.
Nostr Help
Nostr can be built-in as a plugin, which unlocks interactivity with that complete ecosystem. The plugin helps person account verification as a substitute for managing a person database and may assist zaps and Lightning funds by way of Nostr Pockets Join.
Satoshi Tickets
Satoshi Tickets is an occasion ticket administration system, an instance of the depth of tooling supported by BTCPay Server plugins and the potential it unlocks. The ticket system is in fact totally built-in with the invoicing and funds accounting layer, letting occasion companies settle for bitcoin and fiat funds with the assistance of different plugins and API.
Prism
BTCPay Server has discovered a dependable area of interest in Bitcoin conferences, the place retailers are sometimes inspired to just accept bitcoin as fee and are prepared to be onboarded to new applied sciences. The suggestions ensuing from many such checks is that retailers want greenback stability to a minimum of cowl their prices, and that is the place the Prism plugin is available in. Prism permits the splitting of sats movement to totally different pockets of values, permitting retailers to auto convert, say, 80% of their income to USDT by way of an trade like Sideshift, protecting the remaining 20% in bitcoin.
This type of know-how is important for cashflow-heavy companies which have very predictable bills and may’t abdomen the volatility threat. The earnings nonetheless can simply keep in BTC in the event that they so select.
Money Plugin
There’s even a Money plugin that helps money funds utilizing BTCPay Server because the invoicing suite. It helps a variety of fiat currencies, a key function for brick-and-mortar companies that don’t serve the Bitcoin market primarily.
Podserver
Even podcasters who symbolize a big and important portion of the Bitcoin neighborhood can arrange self-host podcasting 2.0 streaming by way of BTCPay Server with a devoted plugin.
Supporters
BTCPay Server is supported by numerous philanthropic and for-profit organizations by means of grants and donations resembling Opensats, the Human Rights Basis, Spiral and Tether, amongst others. Particular person contributors are sponsored at instances to do particular or common work, whereas a BTCPay Server nonprofit basis has additionally been set as much as deal with conventional donations and distribute them to the contributors on a case-by-case foundation.
