The Problem We Were Actually Solving
We had a digital product that we were eager to sell to customers worldwide. However, our chosen payment gateway refused to support international transactions, citing anti-money laundering (AML) and know-your-customer (KYC) regulations. This was a problem not just for us, but for many other digital product creators who rely on global sales to sustain their businesses. The question was: how could we accept Bitcoin payments without being bound by the limitations of traditional payment gateways?
What We Tried First (And Why It Failed)
In our early attempts to integrate Bitcoin payments, we tried using popular libraries like Stripe's Bitcoin integration and a few other open-source libraries. While they offered a convenient API, we soon realized that they relied on the same flawed underlying architecture that the payment gateways used – namely, the need for intermediaries to process transactions. As a result, we encountered issues with scalability, security, and processing fees that outweighed the convenience.
The Architecture Decision
