Getting rid of reliance on Microsoft Azure
In a guide published by Nicolas Dorier, Bitcoin creator and developer, a solution for merchants who prefer to accept payments independently without going through any of the banking formalities has been explained. Furthermore, a secondary problem, which is the mandatory use of Microsoft Azure, has also been sorted out, minimizing the reliance and cost involved in such transactions.
BTCPay Server can easily be hosted with the magical one-click deploy to azure. However, simplicity comes with a cost: Around 65 USD per month
The cost mentioned above can be lessened to $20 per month by adhering to the steps mentioned in the guide after performing the initial sync. Dorier further highlights that “the cost of Azure is too damn high.”
It should be also remembered that Azure service costs cannot be settled with Bitcoin. In fact this has led merchants “have [a] headache [when paying] for their Azure account because reasons about their credit card”.
BTCPay Server
Open source solution
Despite being available for almost a year, BTCPay gained prominence only recently in the cryptocurrency world when accomplished merchant CheapAir openly announced its migration to the open source gateway after it became dissatisfied with Coinbase and cold shouldered its competitor BitPay.
Bitcoin itself is decentralized, but payment processors are not, and they use their comfortable position to abuse its customers
BTCPay working method
By substituting Azure with an alternative VPS provider, say for example Dorier’s Lithuania-based timevps, the cost of processing Bitcoin transactions using a condensed full node is trimmed from a minimum of $20 per month to the equivalent of around $6.
Dorrier also explained how the proposed system will prevent government intervention.
“…If tomorrow the US government bans Bitcoin, or that using Bitcoin becomes suddenly “offensive or unpatriotic” (which will happen when shit hit the fan with USD), and merchants are using Microsoft Azure, then lots of shops will end up closed. This would hurt the ecosystem.”