BTC Pay vs Lightspark

BTC Pay Server, developed by a community-driven open-source project, is a self-hosted Bitcoin payment processor designed to empower merchants and individuals to accept Bitcoin payments securely and privately without intermediaries. All payments go directly to the user's own wallet—private keys stay under user control, greatly enhancing privacy and censorship resistance.

Unlike other payment solutions, users can create online stores, point‑of‑sale systems, tipping buttons, crowdfunding campaigns, or invoice links—all within a single interface. It avoids KYC, middleman fees, and personal data collection, appealing to anyone seeking financial sovereignty with seamless integration to hardware wallets or custodial services.

Users highlight its open‑source, self‑hosted nature and flexibility, commenting on how easy it is to connect a cloud‑hosted or home server, link a Bitcoin wallet, and enable Lightning payments—empowering them to accept Bitcoin anywhere, anytime, though some note the initial setup complexity for beginners.

BTCPay Server's mission is to democratize Bitcoin payments—removing fees, intermediaries, and technical barriers. Their vision for the future includes releasing a mobile app to enable non‑custodial Lightning payments for merchants, refining multisig and fee‑acceleration tools, and expanding e‑commerce integrations.

Lightspark is a payments infrastructure company founded by David Marcus (formerly of PayPal, Meta, and Diem) in 2022. They aim to build what they call the "Money Grid," a global, open payment network using Bitcoin as a neutral settlement layer and leveraging Lightning for high-speed transfers.

Their target audience includes enterprises—digital banks, fintechs, wallets, exchanges—that need to move money across currencies and jurisdictions instantly and cheaply, as well as developers building Bitcoin-native payment applications or self-custodial wallets that need scalable infrastructure.

What sets Lightspark apart is their end-to-end product integration, combining seamless liquidity management, intelligent routing, compliance-ready infrastructure, and human-friendly Universal Money Address (UMA) tech. This abstraction lets banks, wallets, exchanges, and businesses effortlessly send and receive fiat or crypto globally without having to manage Lightning channels, cross-border FX, or complex on-chain details. These tools have already seen traction with big regulated partners and typically involves KYC via the partner.

Looking forward, Lightspark's vision is to scale the Money Grid globally—connecting all real-time payment systems and making Bitcoin native rails for everything from everyday consumer transfers to B2B fiat-fiat flows. Spark aims to resolve key Lightning limitations like self-custody economic scalability and lacks native token support. By building Spark open-source and fully backward compatible with Lightning, they hope to decentralize stablecoin issuance on Bitcoin and finally realize high-velocity, global Bitcoin-based payment settlement.