GoMining, a bitcoin mining company, is entering the merchant payments space with a new software development kit and application programming interfaces for its GoBTC Pay protocol. The move puts the company in direct competition with Block, the fintech giant co-founded by Jack Dorsey, which has been rolling out its own bitcoin payments service using the Lightning Network over the past year.
The key differentiator, according to GoMining CEO Mark Zalan, is that merchants receive bitcoin by default rather than fiat currency. While competitors like Square convert bitcoin payments into U.S. dollars automatically, GoMining’s system keeps transactions entirely on-chain and in bitcoin. Merchants who want fiat conversion must handle that themselves.
“Our idea isn’t to squeeze bitcoin into the old fiat experience and lose what makes it bitcoin along the way,” Zalan said in a Telegram interview. “It’s to solve the real problems with BTC payments, the high and variable fees, the slow and unpredictable settlement, while preserving non-custody and onchain finality.”
The GoBTC Pay protocol was engineered to settle transactions directly on the Bitcoin network using GoMining’s Stratum V2 mining protocol. The system targets an average settlement time of around 12 hours, with merchants paying 0.2% in transaction fees. Those fees are split 50-50 between wallet providers and miners, creating a revenue-sharing model that incentivizes network participation.
See also: Block Begins Rolling Out USDC Stablecoin Payments to Cash App’s 60 Million Users
GoMining unveiled the SDK and API on Friday and plans to recruit an initial 10 merchants as part of the rollout. The company is betting that a growing number of businesses will prefer to receive and hold bitcoin directly rather than convert to fiat immediately, a thesis that contrasts sharply with the approach taken by established payment processors.
This follows a pattern seen in related coverage of Block’s USDC stablecoin payments rollout to Cash App’s 60 million users, where traditional finance rails remain the default option for most merchants. GoMining’s native bitcoin approach represents a fundamentally different philosophy about how cryptocurrency should integrate into commerce.
Block’s bitcoin payments service, which launched over the past year, operates on the Lightning Network, a layer-2 scaling solution designed to enable faster and cheaper transactions than the base Bitcoin blockchain. The Lightning approach prioritizes speed and low fees, converting to fiat by default to reduce merchant friction. GoMining’s on-chain settlement strategy trades some speed for what it views as superior security and finality guarantees.
The competitive landscape for bitcoin payments has intensified as major financial institutions explore cryptocurrency integration. According to CoinDesk’s coverage, the payments sector remains one of the most contested areas in crypto adoption, with multiple approaches vying for merchant mindshare.
GoMining’s positioning assumes that merchants increasingly want exposure to bitcoin rather than immediate fiat conversion. This reflects a broader shift in how some businesses view cryptocurrency, moving from a payment medium to a store of value and treasury asset. The company is essentially betting that the bitcoin-native merchant thesis will gain traction as institutional adoption deepens.
The 0.2% fee structure is competitive compared to traditional payment processors, though it remains higher than some Lightning-based alternatives. However, GoMining argues that on-chain finality and non-custodial settlement justify the fee level. Merchants retain full control of their bitcoin without relying on third-party custodians.
The rollout with 10 initial merchants will serve as a proof-of-concept for the GoBTC Pay system. Success at this stage could signal broader merchant appetite for native bitcoin settlement, potentially validating GoMining’s thesis that the market is ready for payments infrastructure built around bitcoin rather than retrofitted onto it.
As the bitcoin payments space matures, the competition between different settlement approaches, layer-2 solutions, and fiat conversion models will likely intensify. GoMining’s entry represents a clear bet that at least some segment of merchants will prioritize bitcoin preservation over immediate liquidity conversion.
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