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For merchants who aren't using woocommerce, the standalone BareBits software (either installed on a web server or using the Windows installer to install on desktop) also works for invoicing, taking payments, etc.
The Windows installer is more intended for point-of-sale environments since it can't be accessed outside of localhost. But that's fine for just taking and verifying payments on invoices.
For any other e-commerce software, they can just install the BTCPay Server plugin for that software and when prompted to enter their BTCPay Server installation URL, they put in their BareBits URL.
Maybe at some point in the future if we get demand for that. An Android version is also hopefully on the horizon.
Good question, there will be no consequences whatsoever, this doesn't rely on any infrastructure hosted by the BareBits devs. The update checker would probably complain that it can't find updates. Fees would fail to redirect but in that case that means your customer payments would go directly to you.
The BareBits devs have no access to any funds or any customer information. And the BareBits software does not rely in any way on the BareBits infrastructure.
The actually more important external dependencies are mempool.space (used to verify an on-chain transaction has been paid) and currency conversion websites (multiple are used) if your primary currency isn't sats.
And of course your cashu mint(s) (if enabled) and submarine swap providers. All is designed to fallback as gracefully as possible to other methods. Cashu is only used in the first place if you have no other LN receiving methods. If that happens, your customers just get an on-chain invoice only, no LN.
Why then the plugin have this need to replace the BTCpay server connection? I guess you are running a BareBits BTCpay server that aggregate all barebits users wallets? is that correct? of how else you justify the replacement of existing BTCpay server setup in the woocommerce payment gateways section?
Basically, when you install the BareBits woocommerce plugin, it either "points to" an existing BareBits installation you have (on the same server or a different one) OR you can have the plugin automatically install BareBits alongside it at install time.
No matter how it was installed, your BareBits installation offers a "BTCPay Compatible Gateway" aka it presents as if it is a BTCPay Server. So to get woocommerce talking to it, we install + configure the BTCPay Server plugin in woocommerce and "point it" at your BareBits installation. And everything just works.
The benefit of this is that it means any e-commerce software that can talk to BTCPay Server can now talk to a BareBits installation instead (we don't have to write 50 plugins across 50 different e-commerce platforms). The downside is that, at least for woocommerce, you can only have one BTCPay Server payment plugin installed per installation. Other e-commerce platforms may enable side-by-side installation, I haven't tested that much on the other platforms.
** Just to clarify -- All this is happening on your own servers. BareBits devs don't run any servers.
Ok, now make more sense. Still I think is unfair to replace and existing setup. In our case we offer multiple payments gateways (all bitcoin-only).
With this small test I was hoping to add BareBits as new payment method, but if this mean remove BTCpay server (the most trusted and used by our beloved customers), I'll need to stop here and wait until BareBits is a complete and independent system.
Ping me anytime when you have news on this particular point :)
wporg is the version uploaded to the official wordpress plugin repository, it's a slimmed down version that removes the auto-installer for licensing reasons. You want the main (non-wporg) version.
If you have a woocommerce installation you want to use BareBits with, you can either install barebits separately or just install the wordpress plugin and have it install BareBits alongside itself automatically. I would suggest the automatic method.
The benefit of a separate installation would be the ability to have multiple woocommerce stores connecting to the same BareBits installation if you wanted to do that for some reason.
Fees are automatically taken out of incoming payments. The "fee due" gradually accumulates. Once an incoming payment is less than the fee due (for example, say you owe 1000 sats in fees and the incoming payment is 500 sats), that entire payment will be redirected to pay for the fee. This is all shown transparently in the BareBits dashboard and invoice list so you can keep an eye on it. Basically, instead of your customer paying you for that checkout flow, they pay us. We do it in this way to keep the software fully self-custodial.
If you have a cashu mint enabled, fees can also be withdrawn from the cashu mint via lightning once they reach a certain threshold. The cashu mint (if enabled) is the only funds your installation of the BareBits software actually has access to, since all other incoming payments go directly to your off-server wallet via NWC, CLINK, LNURL, Strike API, or on-chain address. Funds in the cashu mint are also automatically swept to your off-server wallets as often as possible to reduce cashu-based risk.
The benefit of a separate installation would be the ability to have multiple woocommerce stores connecting to the same BareBits installation if you wanted to do that for some reason.
That's really interesting.
Another question I have. Does this wordpress plugin enable another payment gateway in woocommerce or how else it integrate with it?
One reason you might want to have multiple woocommerce stores using the same BareBits installation is if you wanted to offer hosting that as a service to your clients. You might want to do this as a business integrator, consultant, etc.
You can charge a fee on top of our 1% fee to your clients, it's all configurable in the config file. Everything gets transparently redirected like the dev fee.
Note that doesn't require multiple stores, you can add your own fee to a single-store installation.
The BareBits wordpress plugin installs the BTCPay Server for WooCommerce plugin and just points it at the BareBits installation. BareBits is a fully BTCPay compatible API, so any plugin for any ecommerce software that talks to a BTCPay instance can talk to BareBits and won't know any difference.
This also means that for any given woocommerce store, you shouldn't have both BareBits and BTCPay as a payment method, pick one. The installer will warn you about this. We are working on a solution to this but for now that's the situation,
Any feedback you have when using the software, things you find confusing, etc please let us know, we very much value it!
Wow, ok, that's a lot more features that I would have expected.
So are you saying that to use it, a merchant should install teh software in a web server, plus (for example in our case) install a wordpress plugin?
Do we need any BareBits account to be able to pay the 1% fee? or is that andled in the backend?
We will be happy to test this out in our playground shop SWAG.btc.pub.