Bitcoin Developer: Merchants Accepting Crypto Can Process Their Own Payments for Less Than $6 per Month

Bitcoin developer Nicolas Dorier has recently published a guide revealed that merchants accepting bitcoin can process their own payments through a bitcoin full node via a BTCPay Server, a move that can cost less than $6 a month.

According to the guide, merchants can currently host a BTCPay Server in a process that takes one click through Microsoft Azure. The simplicity, however, will cost them $65 per month. While the cost can be brought down to $20, it could still be high enough to deter businesses from accepting crypto.

Moreover, Azure doesn’t accept bitcoin payments. Per Dorier, some of his friends have had to deal with complications on their Azure accounts because of issues related to their credit cards. Paying with BTC, he implied, would make everything easier.

Per Dorier, helping merchants host their own full node and helping them stop relying on centralized processors, like BitPay and Coinbase, may be important. He stated:

If tomorrow the US government bans Bitcoin, or that using Bitcoin becomes suddenly “offensive or unpatriotic” (which will happen when shit hit the fan with USD), and merchants are using Microsoft Azure, then lot’s of shops will end up closed. This would hurt the ecosystem.

Dorier’s $6 a month solution would see merchants start using an alternative Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting service. After digging a little into it, he found time4vps, a Lithuania-based service, accept BTC and only costs users $6.87 a month. If they pay for a two-year plan up front, it costs $5.14 a month.

To process their own payments, BTCPay recommends merchants should have a minimum of 2 GB of RAM and 80 GB of storage, while noting it can take a couple of days for the BTC network to synchronize. Using this method, merchants will also be able to accept Lightning Network payments.

BTCPay has notably been around for a year, but has only managed to rise to prominence after travel booking website CheapAir revealed it was using it to accept cryptocurrency payments, after San Francisco-based Coinbase revealed it was shutting down the Merchant Tools solution it used.

CheapAir’s CEO Jeff Klee, in an interview with CryptoGlobe, revealed accepting bitcoin payments was one of the “best decisions” he’s ever made. Per his words, bitcoin has been growing as a part of the company’s business.

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