Services · payments

Voltage Payments

A REST API for Lightning payments with the nodes, channels, and liquidity abstracted away — send and receive bitcoin over Lightning, backed either by Voltage's own credit line or by your own node.

service Voltage (Voltage Credit, LLC) consume + offer usage-based, sales-quoted (no public rate card); credit-backed accounts settle on a monthly billing cycle Links verified 2026-08-08
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What it is

Voltage Payments is a “Stripe for Lightning”: a REST API (https://voltageapi.com/v1) that lets a business create Lightning wallets, send and receive bitcoin over Lightning (BOLT11), manage teams and permissions, reconcile accounts, and receive webhooks — with the nodes, channels, and liquidity mostly abstracted away. That abstraction is the whole point: you make an API call, and Voltage handles the routing and inbound/outbound liquidity that normally make running a Lightning node hard.

It ships in two shapes. Node-backed points the API at your own Lightning node — you keep complete control of your infrastructure and funds. Credit-backed lets Voltage run the infrastructure and gives you a business line of credit (no pre-funding, monthly settlement), secured by collateral — BTC or USD held in a multi-sig vault, or bank-account verification.

The transacting asset today is bitcoin. Voltage’s marketing pairs “BTC & USD,” but the developer docs are explicit that bitcoin is currently the only supported asset, with USDT still “coming soon.” USD lines of credit have shipped — the docs carry dedicated Sending and Receiving (USD Line of Credit) guides in which a USD wallet converts USD to BTC at payment time, and the API exposes /lines_of_credit/* and /quotes. What remains “coming soon” is USD invoice payments — settling Voltage’s own billing invoice by ACH, which is a different thing. Credit-backed accounts denominate and settle their activity in USD against the BTC rail, but the value that actually moves is Bitcoin over Lightning.

When to use it

  • A business or agent needs to send and receive bitcoin over Lightning behind one API without operating its own node and liquidity.
  • You want to point the same API at your own node (self-custodial) rather than a hosted one.
  • You want machine-tempo Lightning settlement with usage-based billing rather than running the rail yourself.

Dependencies & payment

A business account — and this is a regulated financial onboarding, not a self-serve signup. Voltage Payments is only available to businesses in approved U.S. states; the mainnet application collects org structure and TIN plus beneficial-owner details for anyone holding 25%+ (name, DOB, address, SSN/TIN), and credit-backed accounts must post collateral (BTC/USD in a multi-sig vault) or verify a bank account. Pricing is not a published rate card — “shaped around your volume, your rails, and how you deploy,” set with sales at approval; credit-backed accounts get an approved credit amount and a billing-cycle frequency. Mainnet applications are currently closed; you can read the docs and build against staging today, but live access is gated.

Quick start

The API is public and documented at docs.voltageapi.com (interactive spec at voltageapi.com/v1/docs). Auth is a per-environment API key sent as an x-api-key header, generated from the dashboard’s Team → API Keys page. One integration quirk worth knowing: creating a payment returns HTTP 202 (accepted), and you then GET the payment to retrieve the actual invoice. There is no official SDK and no MCP server — integration is hand-rolled HTTP against the REST endpoints. Build against staging first; mainnet onboarding is closed at time of writing, so an agent cannot self-provision live credentials.

Gotchas

  • Bitcoin is still the only transacting asset, despite “BTC & USD” marketing. USDT remains roadmap (“soon”); USD lines of credit are live, but a USD wallet converts to BTC at payment time — so USD is a denomination and a credit line, never the thing that settles. Lead with the docs, not the homepage.
  • Credit-backed is a secured loan, not just a payments account. Collateral sits in a multi-sig vault; it’s a lending relationship with Voltage. Node-backed is the self-custodial path — you keep the funds.
  • Business-only, U.S.-states-only, heavy KYB. Beneficial-ownership disclosure and SSN/TIN are required. No individual, non-US, or anonymous access.
  • Mainnet onboarding is closed. Staging is open; live money movement is gated and sales-approved.
  • No SDK, no MCP. Raw REST only — an agent can drive the API once credentialed, but there’s no published agent-ready path and no self-serve onboarding.