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BTCPay Server FAQ
This is an FAQ section for our BTCPay Server product specifically. If you don't find your question on this page, please send us an email at [email protected].
Yes. You can create a BTCPay Server account for free for 7 days. After the 7 days you can either purchase a plan or your account will expire and be deleted.
Yes, you can create multiple stores in your account. However, Voltage only provides the assisted set up for one store per account. You can create additional stores within your BTCPayServer dashboard.
Currently we only offer shared server accounts. If you would like your own server you can contact us at [email protected].
You can learn more about the product and how to use it on the project's website. You can also get support in their community chat at chat.btcpayserver.org.
To start receiving payments to your Lightning enabled BTCPay Store you need inbound channels opened to your Lightning node. See the BTCPay Server documentation or our Quick Start Merchant Guide about setting up your node for merchant use.
If you generated your Bitcoin wallet from an external application you'll need a wallet application to spend your funds. You could use the application that generated the private key to spend, or you could use another software wallet. We recommend either Electrum or Sparrow wallets. Once you install either of these wallets you can import your seed into them to spend funds.
- 1.Download Sparrow from their website and open it.
- 2.Select New wallet and name it.
- 3.Select New or Imported Software Wallet and then select Mnemonic Words and the appropriate number of words from the dropdown.
- 4.Enter the words and select Create Keystore
- 5.Done! Your transactions should start showing up in your Sparrow wallet.
If you transactions don't show up in Sparrow please read the BTCPay documentation about Gap Limits. You may need to increase your Gap Limit.
- 1.Download Electrum from their website and open it.
- 2.When selecting a server choose 'Auto connect' or choose the path to a node you trust.
- 3.Give your wallet a name and click 'Next'
- 4.Select to create a 'Standard wallet'
- 5.When selecting your Keystore, select 'I already have a seed'
- 6.Enter the 12 word seed phrase you received when creating the wallet.
- 7.Click the 'Options' button and select the 'BIP39 Seed' box and click 'Ok' then 'Next'
- 8.Leave the checkbox on 'native segwit' and click 'Next'
- 9.You can optionally add a password to your wallet if you would like. Click 'Next'
- 10.Done! Your transactions should start showing up in your Electrum wallet.
If you transactions don't show up in Electrum please read the BTCPay documentation about Gap Limits. You may need to increase your Gap Limit.
When attaching your Voltage Lightning node to your BTCPay Server store through our dashboard there's several things that happen behind the scenes in your browser. One of them is we bake a macaroon for your node that has the required permissions for BTCPay Server. You can find the necessary permissions here. This allows BTCPay Server to create invoices for your node, but does not have the ability to spend funds.
This is an API Key we generate when we create the account. This is what we use to attach your Voltage Lightning nodes to your store. You can safely remove this if you would like, however you will no longer be able to update which Voltage Lightning node is attached to your store from our dashboard. Any updates would have to be manually done by you.
At Voltage one of our core missions is to not have access to private keys of our users. Due to this, we have disabled the ability to create hot wallets on Voltage hosted BTCPayServer services. To connect an on-chain wallet to your BTCPayServer, we recommend extracting your xpub from a hardware wallet device such as a cold card, jade, or trezor, and then configuring your BTCPayServer with that xpub by clicking Bitcoin --> Connect an Existing Wallet --> Extended Public Key. This will ensure that the private key to that wallet remains totally in your control.
If backing up your seed phrase, always use a strong password
You always need to write down your seed phrase and password somewhere outside of Voltage. Your funds will be lost if you don't keep a copy of your seed phrase. Not even Voltage can recover them for you.