The Strike API lets you make borderless transactions with amounts, speeds, and costs that are impossible using legacy financial systems.

It's a payments API that makes cash and bitcoin transactions globally by using Bitcoin as both an asset and a network:

• The bitcoin asset: (Lowercase “b”) The scarce digital form of money that’s traded across all major currencies 24/7/365 and used by people worldwide to hold and transact value.
• The Bitcoin network: (uppercase “B”) The global web of connections between computers running Bitcoin’s software, through which peer-to-peer bitcoin transactions are made.
• Bitcoin’s Lightning Network: The Lightning Network is a “2nd layer” scaling solution for the Bitcoin network, enabling real bitcoin transactions that can be finalized instantly, in amounts as small as a fraction of a penny, and for low-to-no cost.

What does this mean?

It means that people can trade local currency for bitcoin, send bitcoin anywhere, then hold or cash-out to any other global or local currency. It’s a cash-to-bitcoin-to-cash conversion that lets value move across borders, apps, and assets, using Bitcoin as global payments infrastructure.

By making the cash-to-bitcoin and bitcoin-to-cash transactions programmatic and instant, value can be sent through the Bitcoin or Lightning networks with unprecedented amounts, speeds, and costs.

That’s what the Strike API can do for you.

The Strike API is your gateway to getting into and using Bitcoin. It lets you send and receive cash or bitcoin transactions through the Bitcoin and Lightning Networks, while giving you the flexibility to operate exclusively in cash, for whatever tax, volatility, or accounting purposes. It also lets you ditch legacy payment processors’ expensive fees, chargeback/fraud headaches, lengthy settlement times, and frustrating limits.

By using the Strike API for your transactions, you gain:

• Asset flexibility: You can transact with cash or bitcoin, whichever money best suits your needs.
• Network interoperability: You can send and receive via the Bitcoin (aka blockchain) or the Lightning Network, and then cash-out to external bank accounts via legacy cash networks.
• Payment finality: Once a Bitcoin payment is delivered, there are no chargebacks, reversals, or extended settlement times
• Borderless payments: It’s just as easy to accept payments from across the street as across the world.
• Speed: Lightning payments are settled instantly, while large payments via Bitcoin’s blockchain are settled in ~10 - 60 minutes.
• Scalability: You can send $100M on a holiday Sunday, or receive sub-penny micropayments second-by-second from global customers.

Bitcoin is global payments infrastructure and the Strike API is your gateway.

What can the Strike API do?

The Strike API is all about transactions.

It’s connected to your Strike account, where you can hold a cash and/or bitcoin balance and easily exchange between the two (aka buy/sell bitcoin) and make borderless transactions. The Strike API’s functionality can be broken down into a few categories: exchanging, sending, receiving, directing, making cash payouts, and using OAuth for robust 3rd party permissions.

Exchanging (buy & sell bitcoin)

Upon signing up and funding your account by depositing cash or receiving a bitcoin transaction, you can then buy and sell bitcoin programmatically, or trade bitcoin manually via the web-based Strike Dashboard.

Programmatic bitcoin trading lets you build your own logic, timing, and/or frequencies into when and how you enter and exit bitcoin positions. Follow this walkthrough to learn how to exchange cash and bitcoin.

Sending payments

You can send cash or bitcoin payments through the Bitcoin or Lightning networks, including to Lightning invoices, LNURLs, Lightning addresses, or Bitcoin addresses, depending on your use case or payment size. For on-chain payments, you can also customize your fee level for how quickly you want your payment delivered, or pay no fees for flexible delivery times. Behind the scenes, Strike handles all necessary asset conversions and network operations to ensure your payments are made in the fastest and most cost-effective way possible.

The ability to send cash payments through the Bitcoin and Lightning networks, without even needing to hold bitcoin, means your payments gain the speeds and scalability of Bitcoin that can’t be matched by legacy systems. Follow this walkthrough to learn how to send payments.

Receiving payments

Similar to sending, you can receive payments through the Bitcoin or Lightning Networks to either your cash or bitcoin balance. This involves the Strike API generating Bitcoin addresses or Lightning invoices on-demand, which can be presented to the sender either as a string of characters or in QR code format, depending on your use case.

On-demand payment request generation, coupled with bitcoin transaction finality, means you can request and receive payments, settled as cash or bitcoin, without having to wait for lengthy and risky settlement schedules. Follow this walkthrough to learn how to receive payments.

Directing payments

“Directing a payment” is receiving a payment, where the recipient is not your own Strike account. This is made possible thanks to the Strike API’s integration with the Strike app and its global user base of customers. Directing payments is done by generating a Lightning invoice or Bitcoin address, with a specific Strike user’s username as the designated recipient.

The ability to direct payments on behalf of specific users opens up new design space for 3rd party-focused apps. Follow this walkthrough to learn how to direct payments.

Making cash payouts to bank accounts

You can make programmatic cash payouts to US bank accounts via the Strike API. This includes payouts to personal or company-owned accounts, which can be held by either yourself or a 3rd party.

When paired with the Strike API’s other transaction features, cash payouts means you can receive global cash payments via the Bitcoin network and have those payments automatically paid out in cash to a designated bank account via ACH or wire transfer. Follow this walkthrough to learn how to make cash payouts to bank accounts.

Using Strike OAuth Connect

Strike OAuth Connect is an integration that enables Strike users to log in to their accounts inside your app, grant permissions, and have your app send payments from their balance. It’s a way to build and customize Strike wallet functionality directly into your app, while also accessing an established global user base.

With Strike OAuth Connect you can set payment parameters, such as amount, frequency, and reusability limits, for how and when payments are to be sent on behalf of the users. When combined with directing inbound payments, you can build sophisticated payment experiences, where payments can be sent and received between Strike users or any other Bitcoin or Lightning-enabled wallet globally. Follow this walkthrough to learn how to use Strike OAuth Connect.

The Strike API benefits builders and businesses

The limitations of legacy financial networks are obstacles to overcome:

• “You can’t transact less than $0.01”
• “Payments over $10,000 take extra time to process”
• “Transfers don’t finalize on weekends, holidays, or off-hours”
• “Foreign currencies aren’t supported or get worse rates”
• “Funds may arrive in 1-5 business days before being spendable”

The Strike API lets you surpass legacy limitations. You can receive less than $0.01 or greater than $10,000 internationally, on a holiday Sunday and have the payment arrive and be spendable in seconds to minutes.

Legacy payment constraints are obsolete.

The Strike API liberates payments to be built into an ever-wider range of apps and experiences:

• Content monetization: Build new revenue models such as pay-per-second, pay-per-paragraph, or pay-per-interaction
• Social media: Ditch “Like” buttons in favor of “zapping” real micro-payments for every social interaction
• Spam & bot mitigation: Require micro-payments or micro-collateral deposits for user authentication or feature interactions as a way to price-out bad actors
• Gaming: Introduce real money as in-game rewards or purchases, payable immediately
• Global payroll: Pay global employees and contractors every day or every hour and avoid banks’ punitive fees, bad exchange rates, and arbitrary limits
• Corporate treasury: Transfer large or small amounts to global partners, suppliers, or corporate entities, any time, any day
• Bitcoin strategy: Buy bitcoin programmatically for yourself or your business, to avoid arbitrary inflation and set your own financial future

When borderless, scalable, and low-cost transactions are as easy as an API call, there’s no limit to what can be built.

The Strike API is where it all begins.

Get started by contacting partners@strike.me for a no obligation conversation or reading through the API documentation today.