Weekly Brief 2025/52

This week’s Bitcoin payments signals centered on new consumer-facing acceptance (travel bookings, stadium concessions, airport retail) and maturing merchant infrastructure (BTCPay subscriptions/monetization, plugins, and stability updates). Lightning usage milestones and discovery metrics also featured, while no government regulatory actions were surfaced in the provided sources.

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Executive Summary

Merchant-facing Bitcoin checkout continued to broaden into everyday contexts this week, with new signals spanning travel bookings, stadium concessions, and airport retail. South Africa stood out for consumer-visible payment touchpoints—both direct merchant acceptance and QR-based flows that can hand off payments to a linked Lightning wallet. On the infrastructure side, BTCPay Server shipped subscription billing and operator monetization tooling aimed at making merchant onboarding and recurring commerce sustainable. Measurable usage signals leaned toward Lightning, including a $1M settled-volume milestone reported in Africa and multiple sources citing new highs for capacity and merchant discovery.

1) Merchant & Enterprise Adoption

Bitcoin payments showed up in more “normal” spending moments (travel, venues, and retail), which matters because these contexts generate repeatable, consumer-driven transactions rather than one-off pilots.

• (Dec 22, 2025) Travel agency TravelwingsZA was announced as now accepting Bitcoin, attributed to integrations involving PeachPayments and MoneyBadgerPay; the merchant’s booking site was also promoted as supporting crypto payments.

• (Dec 19, 2025) At South Africa’s DHL Stadium, a post claimed you can pay with Bitcoin and have drinks delivered to your seat (referencing ZapperTM and the Stormers).

• (Dec 18, 2025) The Tax Free at Oslo Airport was reported to now accept Bitcoin, with the caveat that it currently applies only to Click & Collect upon arrival, and an expansion to other stores/payment formats is under consideration.

• (Dec 20, 2025) A user who tagged Clicks_SA reported buying sunscreen using Blink, and separately noted a flow where scanning a QR with MoneyBadger can open a linked Lightning wallet to complete the payment.

2) Payment Infrastructure

Payment tooling continued to move toward “merchant ops maturity”: recurring billing, sustainable server operation, and flexible settlement paths that reduce friction for both merchants and local onboarding teams.

• (Dec 18, 2025) BTCPay Server introduced native subscriptions for recurring payments (e.g., newsletters, memberships, SaaS, recurring donations) and also highlighted additional platform updates including server monetization, a plugin builder milestone, and expanded language support.

• (Dec 18, 2025) BTCPay Server also described server monetization as a way to charge merchants a subscription fee to use a BTCPay Server—positioned as non-custodial and intended to make local merchant onboarding efforts more sustainable.

• (Dec 22, 2025) BTCPay Server listed a MtPelerin plugin that (as described) lets a merchant forward received BTC (on-chain or Lightning) and receive funds paid out in fiat or swapped

3) Usage Metrics

Usage signals concentrated in Lightning: reported throughput milestones, plus continued claims of growth in capacity and merchant discovery.

• (Dec 19, 2025) Mavapay reported crossing $1,000,000 in transaction volume “settled instantly” using the Lightning Network.

• (Dec 21, 2025) Lightning Network capacity hits a new all-time high (ATH).

• (Dec 23, 2025) MoneyBadger stated that South African merchants accepting Bitcoin with ZAR payouts could access a market segment of 6+ million wallet users.

4) Regulatory & Policy Developments

No explicit government regulatory actions affecting Bitcoin payments were surfaced in this week’s provided sources; “policy-like” developments were primarily corporate and platform-level.

• (Dec 23, 2025) MoneyBadger positioned its offering for South African merchants as enabling Bitcoin acceptance with settlement paid out in ZAR, paired with an explicit merchant-activation/marketing pitch.
• (Dec 18, 2025) Oslo Airport Tax Free’s Bitcoin acceptance was described as currently limited to a specific purchasing flow (Click & Collect), with a possible future expansion to other stores/payment formats.

5) Strategic Outlook

Taken together, the week’s signals point to two reinforcing adoption levers: (1) more visible consumer checkout points, and (2) better merchant/operator economics and settlement flexibility that can sustain onboarding over time.

• Recurring billing and operator monetization in BTCPay Server are explicitly aimed at making ongoing merchant payments and local server operation more sustainable without taking custody of user funds.
• Merchant acceptance announcements clustered around real-world purchase contexts (travel bookings, stadium concessions, and airport retail), expanding where Bitcoin can function as a medium of exchange.
• Interoperability-focused flows—like scanning via MoneyBadger to open a linked Lightning wallet—reduce dependency on a single wallet and can lower friction at checkout.
• Settlement flexibility continues to be a theme: BTCPay’s MtPelerin plugin description emphasizes routing received BTC (on-chain or Lightning) toward fiat payout or swaps when needed.

The throughline this week is practical payments enablement: more places where Bitcoin is presented as a checkout option (including travel and venue settings), paired with infrastructure aimed at recurring commerce, operational sustainability, and flexible settlement. As these components accumulate—merchant touchpoints, interoperable payment flows, and reliable processor tooling—Bitcoin’s trajectory as a payment rail is increasingly shaped by repeatable, day-to-day transaction pathways rather than isolated acceptance claims.