BTCPay Server

Introduction

BTCPay Server is a free and open-source cryptocurrency payment processor which allows you to receive payments in Bitcoin and altcoins directly, with no fees, transaction cost or a middleman.

BTCPay is a non-custodial invoicing system which eliminates the involvement of a third-party. Payments with BTCPay go directly to your wallet, which increases the privacy and security. Your private keys are never uploaded to the server. There is no address re-use, since each invoice generates a new address deriving from your xpubkey.

The software is built in C# and conforms to the invoice API of BitPay. It allows for your website to be easily migrated from BitPay and configured as a self-hosted payment processor.

You can run BTCPay as a self-hosted solution on your own server, or use a third-party host.

The self-hosted solution allows you not only to attach an unlimited number of stores and use the Lightning Network but also become the payment processor for others.

Thanks to the apps built on top of it, you can use BTCPay to receive donations, start a crowdfunding campaign or have an in-store Point of Sale.

Table of Contents

• Features
• Getting Started
• Documentation
• Contributing
• How to build
• How to run
• How to debug
• Dependencies

Features

• Direct, peer-to-peer Bitcoin and altcoin payments
• No transaction fees (other than those for the crypto networks)
• No processing fees
• No middleman
• No KYC
• User has complete control over private keys
• Enhanced privacy
• Enhanced security
• Self-hosted
• SegWit support
• Lightning Network support (LND and c-lightning)
• Tor support
• Full compatibility with BitPay API (easy migration)
• Process payments for others
• Easy-embeddable Payment buttons
• Point of sale app
• Crowdfunding app
• Payment requests
• Internal Web Wallet

Getting Started

Firstly, decide if you want to host an instance yourself or use a third-party host. If you've chosen to self-host, we documented plenty ways to deploy BTCPay Server.

After successful deployment, make sure to check our getting started and walkthrough guides. In case you would like to use Lightning Network, see Lightning guide.

Documentation

Please check out our official website, our complete documentation and FAQ for more details.

If you have trouble using BTCPay, consider joining communities listed on official website to get help from BTCPay community members. Only file Github issue for technical issues you can't resolve through other channels or feature requests you've validated with other members of community.

Main community chat is located on Mattermost.

Contributing

BTCPay is built and maintained entirely by volunteer contributors around the internet. We welcome and appreciate new contributions.

If you're a developer looking to help, but you're not sure where to begin, check the good first issue label, which contains small pieces of work that have been specifically flagged as being friendly to new contributors.

Contributors looking to do something a bit more challenging, before opening a pull request, please create an issue or join our community chat to get early feedback, discuss best ways to tackle the problem and to ensure there is no work duplication.

• Setting up development environment on Windows
• Setting up development environment Linux (Ubuntu)

You also have an awesome video of our contributors which explains how to get started.

How to build

While the documentation advises to use docker-compose, you may want to build BTCPay yourself.

First install .NET Core SDK v2.1.9 as specified by Microsoft website.

On Powershell:

.\build.ps1

On linux:

./build.sh

How to run

Use the run scripts to run BTCPayServer, this example shows how to print the available command line arguments of BTCPayServer.

On Powershell:

.\run.ps1 --help

On linux:

./run.sh --help

How to debug

If you want to debug, use Visual Studio Code or Visual Studio 2017.

You need to run the development time docker-compose as described in the test guide.

You can then run the debugger by using the Launch Profile Docker-Regtest on either Visual Studio Code or Visual Studio 2017.

If you need to debug ledger wallet interaction, install the development time certificate with:

# Install development time certificate in the trust store
dotnet dev-certs https --trust

Then use the Docker-Regtest-https debug profile.

Other dependencies

For more information, see the documentation: How to deploy a BTCPay server instance.

Supported altcoins

Bitcoin is the only focus of the project and its core developers. However, opt in integrations are present for several altcoins:

• Bitcore (BTX)
• Dash (DASH)
• Dogecoin (DOGE)
• Feathercoin (FTC)
• Groestlcoin (GRS)
• Litecoin (LTC)
• Monacoin (MONA)
• Polis (POLIS)
• Viacoin (VIA)
• BGold (BTG) (also known as Bitcoin Gold)
• BPlus (XBC) (also known as Bitcoin Plus)

Altcoins are maintained by their respective communities.