Running the software to accept bitcoin lightning payments takes some IT knowledge and the willingness to learn and maintain it. It also requires liquidity.
Liquidity in lightning means you are putting up the money you want the capacity to spend. You partner up with another entity (peer) and agree to specific rules to close the agreement. During the agreement’s life, the balance owed to each peer is maintained by both parties with every transaction processed.
- If you have suppliers or vendors that accept bitcoin lightning payments, then this will allow you to push liquidity to your peer so that customers can make payments BACK to you up to the amount you spent out.
- This back and forth of transactions needs to be managed so that there is always available liquidity for customers to make payments.
- Many lightning network operators will have multiple partners (channels) with different balances
- Operators with multiple channels can charge fees for specific channel transactions and by size.
- This for some is seen as an opportunity to profit, the volume today is not sufficient to support this as a business model yet, in my opinion.
Liquidity in lightning also means if you do not have anyone to make initial payments to, you will need to find a partner that will put up the funds for you to receive. Marketplaces exist such as https://amboss.space/ where you can search operators who, for a fee, will put up the bitcoin to allow you to accept payments.
Both of these routes, when setting up to accept bitcoin lightning payments, will seem like a daunting task.
Today, you can skip the liquidity issues by installing a new plug in available in the BTCPay Server Plugin panel. Simply install the plugin and follow the instructions on the Github page. When you setup an account with Strike, then connect your BTCPay Server, all payments will be handled by Strike and your balances can be managed within your server.
This also allows people to learn without needing a lot of money up front to accept payments. It also allows businesses to accept bitcoin and convert instantly to dollars.
You don’t even have to “like” bitcoin anymore! You can accept it and never actually hold it.
Using this plugin does mean that you are subject to any restrictions that Strike may be compelled to enforce. It also means that more businesses can accept bitcoin without the up-front capital.
