GoMining Challenges Square's Bitcoin Payments Ambitions With New BTC Spending Platform

Bitcoin payments have long been one of crypto's most ambitious promises. While Bitcoin has become a mainstream investment asset and a growing corporate treasury reserve, using it for everyday commerce remains relatively rare.

GoMining believes the missing piece isn't demand—it's infrastructure.

The Bitcoin infrastructure company has launched the GoBTC Pay Gen1 SDK and API, opening its Bitcoin payment protocol to merchants, wallet providers, and ecosystem partners looking to integrate Bitcoin payments into real-world products and services.

The launch marks the next phase of GoBTC Pay, transforming the product from a closed demonstration into an open infrastructure layer designed to help businesses build and scale Bitcoin payment experiences directly on Bitcoin.

As part of the rollout, GoMining plans to onboard an initial group of up to 10 merchants and ecosystem partners that will begin integrating GoBTC Pay into their products and services.

The move arrives as Jack Dorsey's Square continues expanding Bitcoin payments across its merchant network, highlighting two competing approaches to bringing Bitcoin into everyday commerce.

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Square Is Bringing Bitcoin to Existing Commerce

Few companies have done more to advance Bitcoin payments than Square.

Earlier this year, Square expanded Bitcoin payment functionality across its merchant network, enabling eligible businesses to accept Bitcoin payments through the Lightning Network while automatically settling transactions in U.S. dollars.

The company's biggest advantage is scale. Square serves millions of merchants globally through its payment infrastructure, giving Bitcoin exposure to one of the largest commerce networks in the world. Merchants can accept Bitcoin without holding BTC, managing wallets, or worrying about cryptocurrency volatility.

For Square, Bitcoin becomes another payment option within a familiar merchant experience.

The strategy reflects Jack Dorsey's long-standing vision of making Bitcoin practical for everyday transactions without forcing businesses to fundamentally change how they operate.

GoMining Is Building a Bitcoin-Native Payment Rail

GoMining is taking a different approach.

Rather than integrating Bitcoin into traditional payment infrastructure, the company is building a payment protocol designed specifically around Bitcoin itself.

The GoBTC Pay Gen1 release includes merchant onboarding tools, payment management capabilities, online payment integrations, a web-based merchant dashboard, public developer documentation, and an open API that allows wallet providers and ecosystem partners to build directly on top of the network.

"Satoshi didn't create Bitcoin to sit idle in wallets. It was designed to move value between people," said Mark Zalan, CEO of GoMining. "With the launch of the GoBTC Pay SDK and API, we're giving merchants and wallet providers the infrastructure to bring that vision into real-world commerce in a way that is seamless and intuitive for users."

According to the company, the protocol settles directly on Bitcoin while preserving user ownership and non-custodial control. Rather than requiring users to hand assets over to intermediaries, GoBTC Pay is designed to allow transactions to settle on Bitcoin while maintaining ownership throughout the payment process.

Powered by Bitcoin Mining Infrastructure

One of the more unique aspects of the system is its connection to GoMining's mining infrastructure.

The company says GoBTC Pay is powered by a private 15 EH/s mempool built on the Stratum V2 protocol, allowing participating miners to prioritize GoBTC Pay transactions. The infrastructure is designed to support faster, more reliable settlement while remaining aligned with Bitcoin's decentralized architecture.

GoMining expects the network to deliver an average settlement window of approximately 12 hours.

The company says the goal is to provide a debit card-like payment experience while preserving Bitcoin's core principles. Users retain control of their BTC, transactions settle directly on Bitcoin, and merchants can accept payments without requiring customers to convert their assets into fiat currencies.

Aligning Merchants, Wallets, and Miners

GoMining has also introduced an incentive model intended to align the interests of merchants, wallet providers, and miners.

Under the model, merchants pay a 0.2% transaction fee—significantly lower than the fees typically associated with traditional card payment networks. That fee is split evenly between participating wallet providers and miners within the GoMining pool responsible for processing settlements.

The company believes directly rewarding the infrastructure participants that facilitate transactions can help accelerate adoption while increasing real-world Bitcoin payment activity.

Rather than acting solely as a payment processor, GoMining is attempting to create an ecosystem where merchants, wallets, and miners all benefit from growing transaction volume.

Two Visions for Bitcoin Commerce

While both Square and GoMining are working toward broader Bitcoin adoption, they represent two distinct visions for how that future may emerge.

Square is integrating Bitcoin into existing commerce infrastructure, allowing millions of businesses to accept BTC through systems they already use.

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GoMining is building a Bitcoin-native payments layer designed specifically for merchants, wallets, miners, and ecosystem partners that want to transact directly on Bitcoin.

The difference is subtle but important. Square wants Bitcoin to fit within the existing financial system. GoMining wants to build new payment infrastructure around Bitcoin itself.

As Bitcoin adoption continues to expand, the competition may help answer one of the industry's biggest questions: will Bitcoin become simply another payment method, or the foundation for an entirely new payments ecosystem?

The launch follows GoMining's introduction of GoBTC Pay at Consensus Miami and marks the beginning of a broader strategy focused on driving merchant, wallet, and ecosystem adoption of Bitcoin payments. For a digital asset originally designed as peer-to-peer electronic cash, the next phase of growth may depend less on ownership and more on usability.