Bitcoin On-chain:
Paid Straight to Your Own Wallet
Customers can now pay you with a regular Bitcoin transaction, next to Lightning. SatsRail hands out a fresh address from a watch-only key and watches the blockchain. It can see your payments. It can never spend them.
What On-chain Means on SatsRail
On-chain is an ordinary Bitcoin transaction, recorded on the blockchain. It is slower than Lightning, since each confirmation takes about 10 minutes, and it is the payment almost every Bitcoin wallet and exchange can already send.
On SatsRail it works the same way Lightning does: non-custodial. The money goes from your customer to an address in a wallet you own. It never passes through SatsRail.
On-chain is in early access. An administrator turns it on for each merchant, so it is not on every account yet. Lightning works for everyone today, and Lightning is still the fastest option.
Customer's Wallet
Picks "On-chain" at checkout, scans the QR code and sends the exact amount to the address shown.
Bitcoin Blockchain
The transaction is broadcast and mined. SatsRail watches the address and counts confirmations.
Your Wallet
The coins land at a fresh address from your own wallet. Your keys. Your money.
A Watch-Only Key: SatsRail Can See, Never Spend
You give SatsRail a public key. Nothing in it can move your bitcoin.
Read-Only by Design
You paste an extended public key (a zpub) or an output descriptor from your wallet app. It lets SatsRail work out your receiving addresses and recognize payments to them. It cannot sign a transaction.
Never Share a Recovery Phrase
SatsRail will never ask for your seed words or a private key, and refuses them if you paste one. Anyone who has your recovery phrase can spend your funds. Keep it to yourself.
Check Before You Turn It On
SatsRail shows the first three addresses it derives. Compare them with your wallet app. The wallet stays off until you confirm they match, so a wrong key or account can't send money to addresses you can't see.
Native SegWit and Taproot
SatsRail derives bc1q (native SegWit) and bc1p (Taproot) addresses only. Legacy and wrapped SegWit addresses are not supported.
How the Customer Chooses at Checkout
Each on-chain wallet has a minimum amount, set by you in your own currency. It starts at 20 (for example, $20). On-chain is offered only when the payment reaches that minimum, because the customer pays a network fee and a small on-chain payment isn't worth it.
If your account has both a Lightning wallet and an on-chain wallet, and the amount reaches the minimum, the checkout asks "How would you like to pay?" and the customer picks Lightning or on-chain. Below the minimum, only Lightning is offered.
If you have several on-chain wallets, the invoice comes from the first one, in your order, whose minimum the amount reaches.
Lightning or On-chain?
| Lightning | On-chain | |
| Offered | Any amount | From the wallet's minimum |
| Speed | Seconds | About 10 minutes per confirmation |
| Network fee | Fractions of a penny | Paid by the customer |
| Your setup | A Lightning Address | A watch-only key |
| SatsRail fee per payment | 0% | 0% |
Confirmations: How Sure Do You Want to Be?
You choose per wallet, from 0 to 2. The default is 1.
0 confirmations
The order is paid as soon as the payment is seen. It is the quickest, and an unconfirmed payment can still be replaced or reversed by the sender. SatsRail warns you when you choose it. Use it only for what you can afford to lose.
1 confirmation Default
The payment is in a mined block. It usually takes about 10 minutes, sometimes more. A good balance for most sales.
2 confirmations
Two blocks on top, about 20 minutes. The choice for larger orders, where being wrong costs more than waiting.
Access to what you sell and the order emails are released when the order is paid, so after the wallet's confirmations. Your customer sees "Payment received, waiting for confirmations" and can close the page: the receipt goes to their email.
Honored Payments and Payments Waiting for Your Decision
Bitcoin lets anyone send anything to an address. SatsRail sorts what arrives.
Honored
A payment for the exact quoted amount, seen within the invoice's 15 minutes, is honored at that quoted amount, however long it then takes to confirm. Price moves in the meantime are yours to carry, and the order is marked paid once it reaches your wallet's confirmations.
If the sender's fee bump replaces the transaction, the new one keeps the original time.
Waiting for Your Decision
Anything else is recorded, and nothing is accepted automatically: a different amount, a payment that arrives after the invoice ran out, a second payment to the same address, or a payment to a reused address. This includes wallets that take their fee out of the amount, so less arrives than was asked.
These appear on the On-chain payments page in your dashboard, with a banner on every page and an email, so you don't miss one. Tiny dust payments under 1,000 sats are listed quietly, without either.
Accept it, or refund it from your own wallet
The money is already in your wallet; a waiting payment only means SatsRail hasn't matched it to an order. You decide:
- Accept it, and the order it belongs to is paid at the amount that arrived.
- Refund it. You send the refund from your own wallet, because SatsRail has no key to send it. Record it on the page, with the transaction ID if you like, so your books match.
- If a payment on the chain disappears before it confirms (a replacement) or a confirmed one is reversed, SatsRail flags the order and emails you. The order stays as it is until you decide.
Privacy: What On-chain Shows, and to Whom
Bitcoin is public. Read this before you connect a wallet.
A Public Chain-Data API
SatsRail reads the blockchain through a public Esplora API (mempool.space by default). That service sees every address SatsRail asks about, expired ones included, and the IP address of our servers. There is no contract between us.
Use a Dedicated Wallet Account
An extended public key reveals every address in that account and its balance. SatsRail stores the key encrypted, but we still recommend a separate wallet account for SatsRail, not your personal savings.
Public and Permanent
Anyone can look up an on-chain transaction, its amount and both addresses, today and years from now. It can't be deleted. A Lightning payment doesn't leave that kind of public record.
Address Reuse Links Invoices
Each invoice gets a fresh address. If one goes unpaid, it can be handed out again after 30 days, or sooner when 20 unused addresses are out at once, so your wallet app sees every payment. Anyone watching the chain can link the two invoices, and a late payment to the first is held for you to decide.
Fees
SatsRail takes no per-payment fee on on-chain payments, as with Lightning. Your plan doesn't change, and the payment goes to your wallet.
The customer pays the Bitcoin network fee when they send. It depends on how busy the network is, not on the size of the sale, which is why on-chain is offered from a minimum amount. See pricing for plans.
What Stays Lightning-Only
On-chain is not everywhere yet.
The POS App
The SatsRail point-of-sale app still takes Lightning payments only. On-chain is for online checkout: payment links, product buttons, the hosted checkout and pay.js. It is also available through the API for early-access merchants who ask for it.
PrivaPaid
PrivaPaid stays Lightning, because viewers expect to watch right after they pay, and a confirmation takes minutes.
Common Questions About On-chain
Straight answers, no jargon
bc1q) from a zpub or a wpkh(...) descriptor, and Taproot (bc1p) from a tr(...) descriptor. Legacy (1...) and wrapped SegWit (3...) keys are not supported, and SatsRail refuses a private key or a plain xpub.
Try On-chain Alongside Lightning
Set up SatsRail in minutes, then ask us to turn on on-chain for your account. Your wallet, your keys, your rules.
Free under $500/mo • Non-custodial from day one • Compliance details