Terminology

Fiat: traditional government currency like USD, GBP, or EUR.

Sat: short for satoshi, the smallest unit of bitcoin. 1 BTC = 100 000 000 sats.

Verifying Your Account

As a regulated financial services company, we have to verify your identity. Just snap a photo of your valid driver's license, passport or national identity card — and a quick selfie — and you'll be on your way.

If we need more information to verify your identity, we'll ask for another form of ID or proof of address, such as a bank or council tax statement from the last 12 months.

Navigating the app

Home Screen

Once the verification process has finished, you'll be back on the home screen. Here, you can:

1. Add funds to your account

2. Buy and trade bitcoin

3. Check the bitcoin price and your account value over time

4. See your recent transactions

5. Check your balances

In the top-left, tap the profile button to view your account balances, avatar image, username and more! To view the bitcoin price, head over to the portfolio section by tapping the bar chart image in the top-right hand corner. To complete an app tour or contact customer support, tap the appropriate icon in the top-right corner.

Friends page

By tapping the contact book at the bottom of the home screen, you can quickly sync your address book or add friends using their:

1. Bottlepay username

2. Mobile number

3. Social network handle

We currently support social payments through Bottlepay Bot's on Twitter and Discord - Reddit, Twitch and Telegram are coming soon.

Portfolio mode

The chart icon in the top right-hand corner takes you to the portfolio section. Here you can:

1. Check the price of bitcoin

2. View your portfolio over time

You can view the price of bitcoin and your portfolio value over different time frames such as daily, weekly and monthly.

Transactions

If you tap the ticket icon you will get information about all your transactions.

Here you can:

1. Search for a specific transaction

2. Filter by 'All, 'Sent', 'Received', 'Trades' and finally 'Scheduled".

By tapping your scheduled trade you can find more information such as when your next trade executes, your total purchases from the recurring trades and the average bitcoin price.

Settings screen

The gear icon on the bottom right-hand side of the home screen takes you to settings. From here, you can:

1. View account limits

2. Choose your native currency and bitcoin denomination

3. View your security preferences

Payment routes

When receiving payments on Bottlepay, you decide whether to accept those funds as Bitcoin (BTC) or in your native currency. This means you can automatically route fiat payments you receive directly to your bitcoin account or vice versa. See below to find out more.

Funding Your Wallet

Firstly, let's get some funds into your wallet. On your home screen, just tap the FUND button. You can deposit traditional fiat currency using your usual bank account via our fast and secure open banking option (UK) or via a manual transfer. What's awesome is that you will receive your own unique payment account (account number and sort-code/IBAN), so no specific reference is required for your transfer.

Note that if you choose to deposit bitcoin on-chain, the transactions may take up to 1 hour. If you choose to deposit via Lightning you can receive funds instantly.

Buying Bitcoin

If you deposited fiat currency, now is a great time to explore buying bitcoin.

By tapping on the TRADE button on the home screen, you'll have the option to do a one-time purchase, or set up a recurring trade.

For recurring trades (also called dollar-cost averaging, or DCA), just specify an amount and frequency (hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly) and the trades will happen automatically. Please note, your account must be funded for the recurring trade to go through but if it’s not don’t worry, it’ll just keep skipping to the next trade until your account is funded again.

Sending Funds

Now that you have both fiat and bitcoin, you can finally send funds and make bitcoin payments.

From the contacts list, you can send funds in a few quick taps. Choose a friend from your list, enter the amount and currency that you want to send and voila, it's on its way.

If you want to withdraw bitcoin or you find yourself in front of a QR code (usually for bitcoin payments), you can just tap the SCAN button from the home screen.

Receiving Funds

Sending is great, but what about receiving?

Same process. Just select a friend from your list and request any amount you want from them.

If you want to receive bitcoin from someone outside of Bottlepay, just tap the FUND button on the home screen, choose "Bitcoin", and select "on-chain deposit" to see your bitcoin address.

Alternatively, you can receive bitcoin instantly over the Lightning Network. Select "Lightning deposit" to create a lightning invoice or tap the "reusable lightning deposit" option to view your own reusable lightning QR code that can be shared and reused! Learn more.