Payments move directly between wallets. There is no account to open and no intermediary that approves a transfer: a transaction is broadcast to the network, included in a block, and becomes progressively harder to reverse as more blocks are added on top of it.
What the numbers mean
- The ticker is BTC and the symbol is ₿.
- Blocks arrive roughly every ten minutes, so a payment is usually treated as final after one to three confirmations.
- Supply is capped at 21 million BTC, and one bitcoin divides into 100,000,000 satoshis — charging 0.00004 BTC is as normal as charging 1 BTC.
Bitcoin in a checkout
For a merchant the practical questions are speed and price movement. Bitcoin settles in minutes rather than seconds, and its rate against your currency can drift while the payment confirms. Providers that auto-convert to a stablecoin remove that exposure: you quote in dollars, the customer pays in BTC, and your balance stays in dollars.
The customer always pays the network fee on top of the invoice amount, which is why the wallet shows a slightly larger total than the price you set.