Bitcoin Payments
Enable Bitcoin and Lightning payments for your institution. Offer 24/7 real-time settlement, eliminate correspondent banking friction, and provide low-cost cross-border payment capabilities.
Enable Bitcoin and Lightning payments for your institution. Offer 24/7 real-time settlement, eliminate correspondent banking friction, and provide low-cost cross-border payment capabilities.
Traditional correspondent banking is slow, expensive, and complex. Bitcoin and Lightning offer instant settlement, transparent pricing, and borderless payments. Banks can now offer modern payment capabilities that customers demand.
Bitcoin never sleeps. Payments settle instantly, any day, any time. No more weekend delays or banking hours constraints.
Send payments globally with minimal intermediaries and transparent fees.
Settle Bitcoin payments through your existing custody provider or settlement infrastructure.
Modern payment infrastructure built for regulated institutions
Instant, low-cost Bitcoin payments through the Lightning Network. Sub-second settlement for everyday transactions.
Full Bitcoin on-chain support for larger transactions and long-term settlement. Configurable confirmation thresholds.
Send payments globally with minimal intermediaries. Transparent fees and near-instant settlement regardless of geography.
Automated reconciliation between Bitcoin payment rails and your institution's existing reporting and accounting systems.
Settle payments through your existing custody provider. No vendor lock-in on the custody side.
Transaction monitoring, audit trails, and reporting integration for regulatory examination requirements.
Customer or counterparty initiates a Bitcoin or Lightning payment through your institution's interface.
Galoy routes the payment via Lightning (instant) or on-chain (confirmations), depending on amount and preference.
Payment settles through your custody provider. Funds are available in the recipient's account.
Transaction data flows to your GL and compliance systems. Full audit trail maintained automatically.
Galoy deploys as a sidecar alongside your existing banking core, whether you run Jack Henry, FIS, Fiserv, or another platform. No core replacement required.
Bitcoin and Lightning payment data flows back to your general ledger through your core's existing integration pathways, keeping your reporting and compliance workflows intact.
Common questions about Bitcoin and Lightning payments for institutions
On-chain Bitcoin payments settle directly on the Bitcoin blockchain. They are well suited for larger amounts and final settlement, typically confirming in minutes to an hour and carrying a per-transaction network fee. Lightning is a Layer 2 protocol that routes payments across a network of bidirectional channels and settles in under a second at fractions of a cent. Lightning fits everyday and high-frequency payments; on-chain fits high-value and treasury movements. Galoy supports both rails from a single integration.
Lightning payments settle in under a second from sender to receiver and are final once the receiving node accepts the payment, with no risk of reversal. The underlying Bitcoin channels are settled to the base layer periodically. From the bank's perspective, the recipient's balance is credited immediately on Lightning success, and Galoy records each payment with full audit data so reconciliation between the Lightning layer and on-chain settlement remains continuous rather than batched.
Galoy provides the Lightning and on-chain Bitcoin payment rails, node operations, routing, liquidity management, and accounting integration that traditional cores don't include. Banks integrate Galoy through a single API rather than building Lightning node infrastructure from scratch. Payment data, transaction history, and ledger entries flow into the bank's existing general ledger and compliance systems, so 24/7 settlement is added without rebuilding reporting workflows.
Lightning has run in production at scale for several years and is used by exchanges, payment processors, and consumer wallets. Galoy operates Lightning node infrastructure with monitoring, redundancy, and channel management designed for institutional use. The bank's customers interact through the bank's existing interface, with familiar KYC, transaction limits, and fraud controls applied at the application layer. The underlying Bitcoin network provides settlement assurance independent of any single counterparty.
Galoy operates Lightning node infrastructure on behalf of the institution, including channel opening, rebalancing, fee management, and routing. Channel capacity is sized to the bank's expected payment volume and rebalanced automatically. Monitoring covers channel health, peer status, and on-chain reserves. The bank does not need to staff Lightning network operations directly. Liquidity policies and operational controls are configured during onboarding and surfaced in the bank's operations dashboard.
See how Galoy can help your institution offer modern payment capabilities.