GoBTC Pay, a Bitcoin payments protocol built by GoMining, charges merchants 0.2% per sale. The same $100 sale costs $2.75 to $3.60 on Square and $2.75 to $3.20 on Stripe.

Shoppers an instant, card-like checkout with no fee of their own. Merchants receive approval in seconds, a flat 0.2% fee and settlement in real Bitcoin on the main chain — not a wrapped token or a sidechain asset. Because processing fees scale with every sale, that percentage gap adds up across a merchant's entire revenue.

How GoBTC Pay Works

The protocol separates the checkout moment from final Bitcoin settlement, in the same way a card network separates authorization from clearing.

A shopper scans a GoBTC Pay QR code and signs a Bitcoin payment authorization in their wallet. GoMining confirms the authorization, and the merchant sees "Approved" immediately. Nobody waits for a block.

GoMining then batches signed payments and settles them on Bitcoin's main chain through its own private mining pool, backed by about 15 EH/s of hashrate — an exahash being a quintillion hashes per second. The target is settlement within roughly 12 hours by the end of 2026. For scale, Bitcoin blocks arrive about every ten minutes on average, so a 12-hour window spans roughly 70 blocks.

Spending funds sit in a 2-of-3 multisig wallet, where any two of the three keys must sign to move money. One key belongs to the user, one to GoMining and one to an independent recovery custodian. GoMining cannot move a user's Bitcoin on its own, and the user signs every payment.

GoBTC Pay is a protocol, not a closed app. Any Bitcoin wallet can add it through the wallet SDK, and merchants can connect through a POS terminal, a dashboard or a developer SDK.

Fees: GoBTC Pay vs. Stripe vs. Square

On a $100 sale, a merchant keeps $99.80 with GoBTC Pay, against $96.40 to $97.25 with Stripe or Square. The gap widens on small tickets, because GoBTC Pay has no fixed per-transaction fee.

The Stripe and Square rates cited are their standard published US rates for 2026. Stripe adds 1.5% for cards issued outside the US and another 1% when currency conversion is needed. Shoppers pay nothing extra with GoBTC Pay: GoMining covers the Bitcoin network fee.

The 0.2% fee is also shared with the ecosystem. Half goes to the wallet that processed the payment and half to the miners who settle it, which gives wallets a reason to integrate.

Where GoBTC Pay Beats Stripe and Square

For customers paying in Bitcoin, the review finds GoBTC Pay wins on cost, on small payments and on cross-border sales.

Cost. 0.2% against roughly 2.6% to 3.3% plus a fixed fee. A merchant taking $500,000 a year in Bitcoin pays about $1,000 in fees, against $13,000 or more on standard card rates.

Small payments. With no fixed fee, a $3 coffee costs the merchant less than a cent. On Square Free in person, the same coffee costs about 23 cents.

Cross-border buyers. Bitcoin has no issuing country, so there is no international card surcharge or currency conversion fee on top of the 0.2%.

Real Bitcoin. Every payment settles on Bitcoin's main chain and leaves an on-chain record. Stripe and Square settle in fiat through card networks.

Open by design. Any wallet can integrate GoBTC Pay, so shoppers can pay from the wallet they already use instead of a single vendor's app.

Backed by mining infrastructure. GoMining settles through its own private pool, so low fees do not depend on a quiet mempool — the queue of pending Bitcoin transactions whose congestion drives network fees up.

In fairness to the incumbents, the review notes that Stripe and Square are the right tools for taking cards, and cards still have far wider acceptance. GoBTC Pay is not a replacement for card processing. It is a much cheaper rail for the growing number of customers who would rather pay in Bitcoin.

Who It's For, and the Verdict

The review concludes that GoBTC Pay is the lowest-cost, most Bitcoin-native way to accept Bitcoin at checkout today. It is aimed at:

• Merchants with Bitcoin-holding customers who want to keep more of each sale.
• Businesses with small tickets, such as cafes and retail, where fixed card fees eat margin.
• Online sellers with international buyers who are tired of cross-border surcharges.
• Wallets that want to offer instant payments without building a payment network themselves.
• Bitcoin holders who want to spend Bitcoin without managing Lightning channels.

Lightning, Bitcoin's payment layer for fast, small transactions, requires opening and managing payment channels — the overhead GoBTC Pay's checkout is designed to skip.

Merchants who already take cards through Stripe or Square do not have to switch. Adding GoBTC Pay alongside them means every customer who pays in Bitcoin costs a fraction of what a card payment costs. The markers worth tracking from here are the protocol's own stated ones: settlement inside the roughly 12-hour window targeted for the end of 2026, and the pace at which wallets adopt the SDK.