Taking Bitcoin at your business comes down to three pieces: an exchange account where the money lands, a way for customers to pay you, and, only if you want it, a wallet you control. Here is the whole setup in 70 seconds, then the detail.
Step 1: Open a business account at an exchange
An exchange account is where your payments land, where bitcoin becomes dollars, and where dollars move to and from your bank. We use Strike as the example here because it is the account riverArk connects to. A Strike business account can receive bitcoin over Lightning or on-chain, and you choose whether to keep it in dollars or in bitcoin.
Sign up as a business. Go to dashboard.strike.me and choose Sign up as a Business. Confirm your email with the code Strike sends, then pick a username. Your username ends in @strike.me and becomes your payment address. Use your business name and write it down: you will enter it in riverArk later.
Verify the business. Strike checks the business the way a bank does when you open a business checking account. Have these ready and it goes in one sitting:
- Your EIN letter from the IRS
- Your formation documents
- A recent business tax or bank document
- Any licenses your business holds
When Strike asks what kind of business you are, pick what you actually sell: retail, food and beverage, services. Do not pick financial services, money services or crypto trading. Those categories send you into a stricter review and slow approval down.
Tell your partners to watch their inbox. Strike emails every owner and operator separately to confirm their name, address and photo ID. An unopened email is the most common reason an approval stalls. With complete documents, approval usually takes a day or two.
Link your bank account. In Strike, add your business checking account, in the same legal name you verified. Strike sends a $0.01 deposit with a three-digit code in the description; enter that code in Strike to confirm the account. From then on:
- Deposits. Move dollars in by bank transfer at no Strike fee. A bank deposit is available to buy with right away and to withdraw once it settles, typically in about five business days. A wire arrives in about a business day.
- Withdrawals. A standard transfer to your bank takes three to five business days and costs nothing. Faster options are available for a fee.
- Buying bitcoin. If you want bitcoin on your books, you can buy it from your dollar balance, once or on a recurring schedule. Optional, and not required to accept payments.
Watch the full Strike walkthrough, in English or Spanish:
Or read it: Setting up your Strike business account.
Step 2: Add riverArk so customers can pay you
An exchange account receives money. It does not give your counter a way to charge a customer. That is what riverArk does.
How a payment works. Staff type the amount on a phone or tablet. A QR code for that amount appears. The customer scans it and pays from Cash App, Strike, Phoenix, or any app that pays a Lightning invoice. You are paid instantly, into your own Strike account.
- Dollars in, dollars out. The customer pays from what their app holds, including a Cash App dollar balance. You receive dollars, unless you choose to keep bitcoin.
- Final, like cash. A completed payment cannot be charged back. No dispute window, no lost sale, no chargeback fee. Handle a return the way you handle a cash return.
- riverArk never holds your money. It moves from your customer to your own Strike account. riverArk creates the payment request and reports the sale.
Set it up.
- Sign up at ark.riverark.io. It is free to start.
- Enter your Strike username during signup, or later under Settings, then Merchant Account.
- Put your counter QR code on the register.
What it costs. One rate, billed on what moves through riverArk: 1% up to $5,000 a month, 0.85% to $25,000, and 0.75% above that. Turn on Dynamic Pricing at +1% and the customer paying this way covers it. Set it below zero and it becomes a discount for paying this way. Your call.
Big tickets. Strike caps each payment at 0.05 BTC, so the dollar ceiling moves with the price. For a larger sale, take a deposit this way and the balance another way.
Selling online? The riverArk API is public today, so a developer can add checkout to your website now. See the API docs.
Try it first. Pay the live demo machine from your own phone at ark.riverark.io/demo and watch the payment land.
What about other cryptocurrencies?
You do not need a separate setup for each coin. riverArk payment requests run on Bitcoin's Lightning network, and many of the big apps where people keep crypto can pay one, including Cash App, Strike, Coinbase and Kraken. A customer with a crypto balance in one of those apps pays your QR code, and you receive dollars. Nearly 60 million people use Cash App, and a Cash App customer can pay from their dollar balance without owning any bitcoin.
Step 3 (optional): Move bitcoin to a wallet you control
If you settle everything in dollars, you can skip this step. It is for owners who choose to keep part of their sales in bitcoin and would rather hold it themselves than leave it on an exchange.
Bitcoin on an exchange is held by the exchange for you. In a self-custody wallet, you hold the keys, and nobody can freeze or move the funds but you. That also means nobody can recover them for you.
- Buy a hardware wallet directly from the manufacturer. Trezor, Ledger, Blockstream Jade and BitBox are common starting points. Never buy one secondhand.
- Write down the recovery words. The device shows you a list of 12 or 24 words. Write them on paper or stamp them in metal, and store them somewhere safe and offline. Never photograph them, type them into a computer, or keep them in the cloud. Anyone with these words can take the funds. Lose them and the device, and the funds are gone.
- Send a small test first. Copy the receive address from your wallet, check it on the device screen, and send a small amount from Strike. Once it arrives, send the rest. Strike's app also offers automatic withdrawals to a saved address once your balance passes a threshold you set.
- More than one owner? Look at a multisignature setup, where moving funds takes more than one key, so no single person or device can move them alone.
Bitcoin you hold rises and falls with its price, and selling it can be a taxable event. Keep records and talk to your accountant.
Get started
Open your Strike business account, then sign up at riverark.io and connect it. You can take your first payment as soon as Strike approves you.
riverArk does not give investment, tax or legal advice and does not recommend holding bitcoin as a business strategy. You can settle every sale in US dollars.