Open Source Bitcoin Payments

Posted: Sat | Jun 29, 2019

Cryptocurrency

In my last article I talked a little bit about some open source cryptocurrency projects with which I like to tinker. However, there is one project I particularly like that I wanted to write about in an article all to itself.

Online Cryptocurrency Payments

When I was first looking into cryptocurrency, one thing that bothered me was the lack of methods to accept cryptocurrency as payment online in a straightforward manner. I just wasn’t satisfied with some of the payment processors out there as I wanted to do the payment processing myself. I became a little frustrated with the inability for me to accept a peer to peer, digital currency, without help from a third party online. Signing up for and giving personal information to a third party seemed like going backward from the anonymity and self-sufficiency that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were providing me with in the first place.

The Solution: BTCPay

Perhaps I overlooked this project in its early stages, but it took me several years of searching before I happened upon an open source, personal payment processing solution. The BTCPay Server is a self-hosted piece of software that you can use to accept Bitcoin for digital, or real-world products online. The BTCPay server, full Bitcoin node, and their Python API work together for your website to accept Bitcoin, with the same benefit as any other payment processor.

Functionality

You can use the Python API to create an invoice, and then wait for your BTCPay server to see that you have received the payment in your personally hosted full Bitcoin Node! You can effectively have all of the functionality of crypto payment processing on your machines. The setup is undoubtedly a lot more than signing up for a third party payment processor, so if you require other payment types or aren’t interested in setting it up, it may be a project to keep in mind for a few years down the road. But if you like setting up your software anyway, there’s no reason not to try it out.

Resources

I haven’t tried this software suite yet, but I’m excited about it and may present a complete guide on this blog after trying it out on a Raspberry Pi. In the meantime, their documentation should have all the answers you need if you are ready to get started.

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