If your business wants to accept bitcoin, running your own node in conjunction with BTCPayServer has key benefits. At Voltage, we take the complexity of running a node away and make it as simple as possible to accept Bitcoin on your website or at a brick-and-mortar business.
When you control your own node, you do not have to rely on a centralized organization or payment processor or worry about chargebacks. This offers you as a business owner protection. In legacy payment systems, cash is an immediate settlement of payment, where cards are not. This is why many business owners want to accept Bitcoin vs. the reliance on mainstream card processors. It is becoming easier to run a node with affordable small computers like the Raspberry Pi. This is a great option but the downside is you must manually maintain the node’s updates, configuration, and make sure the node always stays online. Keeping up with the maintenance of a node can be difficult for a busy business owner. By running your node on the Voltage infrastructure, we will handle all updates, backend configurations, and provide world-class support so you can focus on what matters most: the success of your business. With Voltage as your partner, you can overcome this complexity and be able to accept payments in minutes.
An Example
With cards that interact with the Visa and Mastercard infrastructure, settlement is in about 48 hours. One downside to receiving card payments is that people can chargeback and reverse payments anywhere from 60 to 120 days after payment. In my prior organization, we saw extreme examples of this. Let’s run through an example.
EX) Mike’s Marketing Company got a hot lead to build a website and run paid ads for a client, Bill’s Burgers. Mike’s Marketing gets a contractual agreement stating clear terms. The terms are that service will be delivered and no refunds due to 1) Bill approving the website design before going live, and 2) All Ads budget goes to Google directly, Mike can not get that cash back from Google in the future after running ads. After 6 months of website design and ad management, Bill’s Burgers runs into a financial loss due to unseen circumstances. Bill is now scrambling to find any way to get capital. He calls Visa and claims that he never signed up for Mike’s Marketing and does a “Chargeback”. (There are many chargeback claims you can read more about here) Bill tells Visa he wants his card replaced and never knew of those charges. Mike’s Marketing is now caught off guard by this response after delivering services. Mike must defend against this chargeback and show proof of agreement, email communications, text messages, video recordings, and more. Visa sides with Bill and refunds all 6 months of payments back to Bill. This is an example of counterparty risk by accepting Visa payments.
While this example happens rarely, I have seen these totals exceed $10,000 dollars. The counterparty risk of card processors cannot be diminished. Card processors serve their customers, the cardholders, first and foremost. By running your own Bitcoin node or BTCPay Server you can accept Bitcoin with final settlement payments. This allows you to offer a new payment solution to customers while protecting yourself as a business.
Verifiability
Looking beyond counterparty risk, another reason to run a node is to help the network and verify you are receiving real Bitcoin. Nodes verify the blockchain and the ruleset. Nodes have the power to reject blocks and transactions that are not following consensus rules. (This is like checking a $20-100 bill with a pen to ensure it is not fake) If you are not running your own node you are not fully capable of validating the rules of the blockchain.
As a business owner, you would never accept counterfeit dollars. Or have a desire for someone to take your hard-earned revenue back after service and payment has settled. If you are considering accepting Bitcoin at your business you should run a node.
With our BTCPay Server setup, you can accept payments in minutes, either on-chain with Bitcoin or with Lightning. Start a free trial account today.
If you have any questions or comments either email us at support@voltage.cloud, use our live on-site chat, or join us in Discord. ⚡️
