GoMining is positioning itself against Jack Dorsey’s Square with a newly introduced payment system that focuses exclusively on bitcoin. The company has launched a software development kit (SDK) and application programming interfaces (API) for its bitcoin payment protocol, GoBTC Pay, enabling merchants to accept BTC for their daily transactions.

— GoMining has rolled out a software development kit (SDK) and application programming interfaces (API) for its bitcoin payment protocol, GoBTC Pay.

— This allows merchants to create products and services that utilize the system, enabling them to accept bitcoin for everyday purchases.

— Unlike its competitors, GoMining ensures that merchants receive bitcoin instead of fiat currency by default.

In contrast to existing players, GoMining emphasizes that transactions are entirely completed in bitcoin. While many competitors, such as Square, permit customers to pay with bitcoin and subsequently provide fiat currency to the retailer, GoMining merchants opting for fiat will need to manage the conversion independently.

«Our goal isn’t to fit bitcoin into the outdated fiat framework and lose its essence in the process,» said CEO Mark Zalan in a Telegram interview. «We aim to address the genuine issues associated with BTC payments, such as high and fluctuating fees, slow and uncertain settlements, while maintaining non-custodial and on-chain finality.»

The newly introduced SDK and API for GoBTC Pay enable retailers to tap into the GoBTC Pay system. The company intends to onboard an initial batch of 10 merchants as part of this launch.

GoBTC Pay is designed to facilitate bitcoin payments that are settled directly on the Bitcoin network, leveraging GoMining’s Stratum V2 mining protocol, with an average settlement duration of about 12 hours. Merchants will incur a 0.2% transaction fee, which will be equally divided between wallet providers and miners.

Block, the fintech firm co-founded by Jack Dorsey, has been implementing its own bitcoin payment service over the past year. This system enables businesses to accept BTC through the Bitcoin layer-2 network Lightning. Square’s service automatically converts the bitcoin amount to U.S. dollars, meaning that merchants receive payment in BTC only if they opt for it.

GoMining seems to be banking on the idea that an increasing number of businesses will prefer to receive and hold bitcoin directly.