Have you ever heard of BlockchainAPI.org?
https://blockchainapi.org Has been running since 2016 and has gained over 25k users since launching but not even half of the world know they exist.
It started off as just a BTC payment processor, but the team behind it have now also added Ethereum too.
Many more features have been added, revamped and boosted.
You can now check the status of ALL RUNNING SERVICES at https://blockchainapi.org/status.
It works so simply. You go to their documentation page (https://docs.blockchainapi.org/bitcoin), check how to generate an address, go to their API endpoint, fill in the parameters shown in the docs and it will create a new unique address for you to pay to. Your customer then pays to this address. Once this address receives funds, you’ll be sent data to your callback URL you entered when creating an address. They send up-to 50 callbacks, good or bad until it stops sending.
They also have a nice few tools if you’re needing to find the current fee rates or need to lookup a transaction… you can do all of that just fine.
To be honest, I just love the theme and simplicity behind it all… no need to create an account or anything. It’s just go to their site endpoint and BOOM…. you have a unique address you give to your customers.
Is it just me that’s heard and been using them? Anyone else out there? I love their service and cannot believe so little people have heard about them.
Let’s walkthrough how to create a new BTC address using their endpoint.
You’ll see something like this. These are the parameters for when you create an address.
We can even see here that they have example code written in PHP.
If we were to copy this, it would fully function. You’d switch out the top values:
- $secret (The secret only the owner should know — for handling callbacks — security)
- $my_address (Change to your BTC address)
- $addressType (Which address type do you wish to generate? bech32, legacy or p2sh-segwit?)
- $my_callback_url (Your callback URL to which data will be sent to later)
After changing these values and refreshing the page, we’ll be able to see that a new unique address was created for us. From this point, we should display this address to our customer and allow them to pay ANY amount they wish.
Once a customer pays, the funds will be sent to their node, then forwarded to your destination address.
Note: Every time a new customer pays, we should make a new UNIQUE address so we can track that specific payment.
BlockchainAPI takes 1% from the price (which is nothing really) other than the BTC miners fees.
So now we have a unique address our clients can pay to, we just need a callback to check once the payment has been made.
BlockchainAPI also provides example code to how it should look at https://docs.blockchainapi.org/bitcoin/receiving-callbacks
We can see that for callbacks, these are the parameters they list on their documentation.
Also provided is an example piece of code, again, written in PHP:
We use the secret we chose earlier to confirm that it is us that is wanting to send POST data by telling BlockchainAPI the secret value so it can bypass the security. You should only allow for BlockchainAPI to send callback data to your website.
You can then dig inside of the parameter values such as:
$_POST[“confirmations”];
or
$_POST[“value”];
etc…
The exact same applies for the Ethereum documentation except you MUST ONLY USE EACH ADDRESS ONCE!
You should always generate a new address for all coins but BlockchainAPI currently allows for their BTC address’s to be re-used although is not recommended.
They have a whole guide page written for people with not much knowledge just like yourself located at https://docs.blockchainapi.org/guide/rundown
You can check their Github page out to find the source code that works with their API. They currently have Python and PHP code written to execute the API.
In my opinion, this is the simplest Crypto Gateway API out there.
It’s so so so simple even you can do it!
If you ever need help, check their Discord group out at https://discord.gg/2w8m6BVDvk (This may change in the future so always be sure to check their website out)
Let us know what you think about BlockchainAPI as we’re shocked about the lack of users due to its simplicity and reliability.
